As the video game industry continues shifting away from physical games and toward digital distribution, the rental industry has all but evaporated. Now, GameFly (still a thing, apparently) is trying to turn the tide for game rentals by building a Netflix-like service that would allow users to play games without having to fully buy them.

The first step in this plan is the company’s recent acquisition of Playcast, a cloud-streaming service that would enable GameFly to build a streaming platform for games. Playcast is similar to the now defunct OnLive, a game streaming service that had been purchased by Sony Corp and then shut down only a short time later.

The second step is GameFly’s new partnership with Amazon.com Inc to debut its cloud-gaming platform exclusively on Amazon Fire TV, Amazon’s set-top multimedia system.

How does it work?

Like Netflix, GameFly’s current physical game rental system offers a multi-tiered payment structure that is based on the number of games users can have out at one time.

However, unlike Netflix, which offers unlimited access to its full streaming library for a set monthly fee, GameFly’s system will offer $7 bundles that will allow users to play only a small handful of games throughout the month. Users would be able to play that selection of games as much as they want during that time, but they would have to pay an additional $7 to unlock another bundle of games.

This payment structure may sound unusual compared to the way services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu Plus work, but GameFly director Michael Moritz claims that this is the payment structure gamers would prefer.

“This represents the perfect evolution of GameFly by extending its mission of providing the highest quality video games available to gamers however they want to play,” GameFly CEO David Hodess said.

While game streaming has been a subject of interest for consumers for some time, it has yet to achieve any sort of widespread success, and the idea has been around for much longer than you may think. The mid 1990s saw the creation of Sega Channel, a cable-based game service that allowed Sega Genesis owners to connect to a pay-to-play service that offered games and demos for download.

Screenshot via GameFly.com