Gamerang is launching a new site (currently in beta) with "the ever-important social media aspect of games" . If you’re unfamiliar with Gamerang, it’s been renting video games since 2003, with four distribution centers across the United States. Gamerang boasts over 9,000 titles for every major platform. It works essentially like a Netflix for video games, or a Gamefly if you will.

"While many sectors of the video games industry continue to grow, one niche area has shrunken to only a few companies – video games rental services," a representative for the company tells WebProNews.

Gamerang CEO and founder Greg Gentling shared some viewpoints with us on topics such as why it’s important to have both rental and sales in this space, the impact of social media on rental activity, etc.

"Rental is try before you buy," says Gentling. "Our model is rentals AND sales. Some publishers are charging $10 for their exclusive content, for example Tiger Woods 11 which has a code giving you access to downloadable content if you buy it outright. Gamers use their copy and sell it and the next person that buys it doesn’t get that content. When it comes to used game pricing, we will factor that into the price."

"Netflix is making a lot on the streaming side," he says. "Sony/Microsoft have built platforms. It’s really video games vs movies and there’s some crossover, but they’re targeting different audiences with different usage patterns leading to a very different business proposition."

Gamerang’s new offering places a great deal of emphasis on social media and APIs. The company highlights the following features:

Gamerang 2.0 Beta: Social, community and news features have been added to give members all the information they need in one destination. It’s about getting the maximum content and value out of a service people can enjoy.

Gamerang QuickReturn: Members with accounts in good standing for two months or longer can simply notify Gamerang that they are sending back outstanding rentals and their next available rentals will be shipped, cutting down the turnaround time of sending back and receiving games.

Gamerang API: Now it is easy for individual sites to write a widget and grab Gamerang’s extensive social and news content to incorporate into their site.

"We’re trying to give people more info about a game and attracting people to certain games, creating community, facilitating relationships with other people, expanding the conversation," says Gentling. "We’re pulling and aggregating information via our infrastructure. This involves catering to our consumer demand and increasing the upsell of games, which is why partners want to work with us."

"It’s easy for individual sites to write a widget and grab Gamerang’s extensive social and news content for their site, [and] thus provide depth to their own opinions."

Gamerang says it will soon offer more developments as it goes mobile and integrates deeper API features.