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Consumer Confidential: Productivity falls, games by mail, movies online

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Here’s your typographical Tuesday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

-- Productivity fell for the first time in more than a year last quarter. That’s a potentially bad thing because it suggests the economy isn’t firing on all pistons -- as has been the case for longer than most of us care to think about. But it’s also potentially a good thing because, for a while now, employers have been reaping the benefits of high productivity without hiring more workers. In other words, they’ve been making existing workers work harder than ever. Falling productivity indicates that employers have pushed workers about as far as they can be pushed, and now, finally, businesses will have to start hiring more workers to meet demand for goods and services. That’s the hope anyway.

-- Anyone with kids knows that video games can be pretty pricey. Movie-rental giant Blockbuster has a solution with a new games-by-mail service. For about $8.99 per game, customers can rent a game for a month’s play and then send it back. As many game players know, this can be a shrewd way to do things because not all video games are created equal. Some merit hours of play and replay. Others, not so much. Blockbuster says it already has a game library of about 3,000 titles.

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-- Not to be outdone, Netflix says it’s cut a deal with Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM to stream the studios’ movies online beginning Sept. 1. The movies will be available to Netflix subscribers 90 days after they appear on premium movie channels. Netflix is trying to shift its customers away from renting DVDs by mail, which costs the company a lot, and into renting online, which costs it a bunch less.

-- David Lazarus

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