Archive for the Editorial Category
At the UBS 36th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference on Tuesday, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman claimed, “There’s a strong music orientation to our company; many of our networks are ideal vehicles to promote the game, and you’ll see more and more of that as we move forward.” Hrm.. Viacom? Stong music orientation? It’s not like they own MTV, VH1, and Harmonix. Oh wait, they do…. And DreamWorks, Paramount, and the grand poobah of all tv networks, Noggin (according to my son).
This world renowned conference, as renowned as my birthday, started Monday and runs through today.
According to the recently released October sales numbers by the NPD group, first week sales for the newest installment in the Guitar Hero series may have been a disappointment to Activision CEO Bobby Kotick and Co. Sales for Guitar Hero World Tour in its first week (launch date October 26) were 534,000 units. Compare this to last year’s October release of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, whose sales were 1.4 million units in its first week and you’ll see the huge disparity. Could we be seeing signs of the rock game war raging between Activision and its closest competitor Harmonix’s Rock Band series?
Continue Reading “Guitar Hero World Tour First Week Unit Sales 60% Fewer Than GH3″ »
Two items were brought to my attention this morning that I thought I would share. Both had me thinking to myself, “Which music game company really “gets” their audience?”. The first was the amounts of money that were donated to the two presidential political campaigns. The second was two video examples of commercials for the games. I’ll show you both and you can ponder for yourself.
Continue Reading “Harmonix vs. Activision - Who Really “Gets it”?” »
RockGamer.com invited our member Jaacar to write a story about one of the music games. Here’s his view on the newly released Rock Revolution.
Well I went against my instincts and picked up a copy of Rock Revolution yesterday for the xbox 360. I did it for a couple of reasons. First, even though it is mostly covers, there were some pretty good songs on there. For instance “Paralyzer” by Finger Eleven, “Magic Man” by Heart, etc…
Second, it was only $49. Now I realize there are only 41 songs on the disc but I figured if I only enjoyed half of them, it was still pretty much the same price as Rock Band DLC ($2/song).
Here is my quick review:
Continue Reading “RockGamer.com User Review: Rock Revolution” »
Rock Band has a lot to answer for. This time last year, I was a guitarist. Not a great guitarist. Just a normal guitarist, with a healthy disrespect for drummers. I mean everyone knows that the guitarist is the coolest member of the band, right? I had Guitar Hero I and II. I loved those games. It didn’t compare to playing a real guitar, but it was a pleasant way of spending the odd hour with a cool band backing me up.
Then came Rock Band. I bought it for the social aspect. I loved the idea of having friends around. But I knew we’d all end up fighting over the guitar. I mean, who wants to play drums when everyone knows guitar is the best instrument? And who wants to sing? GUITAR MAN, GUITAR! So it came, and I decided to try the drums, primarily to make sure they weren’t faulty. Fun. Maybe I’ll try Medium, just to try all the songs. Hmmmmmm. Not bad. What’s it like on Hard?
Harmonix and MTV have long sung the praises of Rock Band as a platform rather than just a game in which you’d just continue to buy expansions. This seems to conflict with two of their latest announcements. The most recent, of course, being the release of the AC/DC Track Pack (being purchased as a disc rather than DLC). But taking a step back, they’ve also made it clear that the original Rock Band tracks will never be released as DLC. Why, you ask? Because they want to publish the original Rock Band forever.
Back in the ’80s, video gaming with peripherals wasn’t all too uncommon. Nintendo published things like the Power Glove and ROB the Robot. While it wasn’t too successful, it made playing a video game a whole different experience. We bring us to 2008 where our living rooms are cluttered with plastic guitars, drums, microphones, dance mats and more and we don’t hesitate to shell out another decently large sum of cash to purchase more of the same objects that perform the same functionality.
Welcome to the age of the rhythm action game. The age where games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band are not only selling hardware peripherals, but also selling video game hardware to play it on. People who have never touched a video game in their life will throw hundreds of dollars into investing into plastic instruments. It’s gotten to the point where they are creating outrageous peripherals that cost a lot of money to try and simulate the “rocking” experience. I find it quite silly.
Suppose a company like Harmonix or Activision came up to you and asked you to create a ridiculous peripheral for their next rhythm action game? What would you make and how much would you charge for it?
I asked myself this question and came up with these ten completely ridiculous rhythm game peripherals (that would probably sell), which you can find after the jump.
Continue Reading “Top Ten Outrageous Rhythm Game Peripherals” »
From the strong reported sales of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, to the frenzied pace of downloads for additional music albums and downloadable content in Guitar Hero III and Rock Band, musicians today are finding that rhythm games are a new way to get their music out to fans outside the traditional sales channels. While the revenues from the games themselves are a lure, bands are also finding in fans a renewed interest in their non-game music downloads as well as band merchandise. Is this the next big money maker to save the ailing music industry?
Continue Reading “Bands Find More Money in Music Games than Traditional Album Sales” »
Loading ...
