“Kids are playing Rolling Stones, parents are playing All American Rejects….”, explains John Drake, PR Coordinator from Harmonix, referring to how different generations of people are learning about new music thanks to their hit game Rock Band. “Cats and dogs, living together…Mass hysteria!”, Jen thinks, remembering that line from Ghostbusters, as she watches John being interviewed on G4 by Adam Sessler. 

Take a gander at the interview, watch Sean Baptiste, Community Manager, do double duty on bass and vocals as Billy Idol on “White Wedding” and keep your eyes and ears open to catch the screen shots in the background of the group playing in a Battle of the Bands score duel competition.

In a recent interview with Activision’s CEO in the May edition of Conde Nast Portfolio magazine, Bobby Kotick answers a few questions that lead to more questions. Are we looking at drums and singing in the next release of the GH franchise ? How do you sort through thousands and thousands of local bands to add to a game that will have mass appeal? Here’s an excerpt of the 4 page interview (click the link above to read the entire piece):

Continue Reading “Guitar Hero to Become Rock Band Hero?” »

The folks over at MTV have done a little clarifying over all the rampant speculation of the direction the Guitar Hero franchise plans to go in order to compete with Rock Band’s raging success.   With the single-band release of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, many have started guessing at the next band to be featured in the same format (see rumors on Van Halen and the Beatles).  According to Stephen Totilo’s story, the single band format is not necessarily all we can expect going forward.  Excerpts from the story follow. Continue Reading “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith - Not the New Format for all GH Games” »

Interview by Mike

Sean Baptiste, Manager of Community Development for Harmonix, was nice enough to grant us an interview.   We probably sent him too many questions, for he sent a short apology saying he had a lot going on at the moment and couldn’t get to them all.   We’re much happier with more detailed answers to a few questions then short trite answers to all of them, so we look forward to part 2.  He sent us the reply last week, but we wanted to hold it back till today, our 1 month anniversary.  Yep, our little site is only one month old, and Jen is working on a story to show you how much we’ve grown in just 4 weeks, and what we have in store for you guys in the future!

HMXSean: Hey Mike,

Due to upcoming announcements, information that just isn’t quite ready, and a suddenly very grueling schedule that has had me flying all over the place these are the questions I can answer for now. Let’s revisit this again soon and maybe we’ll have more info and the such!

Rockgamer.com: Why 3 songs a week? I guess 3 is probably a logical number for the non-junkies, but there are a lot of us that wouldn’t mind having more songs released. Continue Reading “Interview with HMXSean, Manager of Community Development for Harmonix, Part 1″ »

The original story can be found here.

Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry talked to USA TODAY’s Mike Snider about the plans for their new Guitar Hero: Aerosmith game. Here’s extended excerpts from their conversations:

Q: What do you think about Aerosmith having its own video game?

Steven Tyler: There are some battles you can’t fight. You would like to keep it traditional and make it just deep, deep tracks from albums or B-sides. But technology is going so fast right now rather than be left behind, you are going with the flow.

It’s a different day and age. Twenty-five years ago we would never have let one of our songs (Dream On ) be one of those used in selling cars (in a 2004 Buick commercial). But now, like with I Don’t Want to Miss A Thing (in 1998’s blockbuster film Armageddon), it’s placement.

When I heard about Activision and all this. I thought whatever I can do for this to make it as good as it can be — because my son plays it — I thought I should do it.

Continue Reading “USA Today interviews Steven Tyler and Joe Perry about GH: Aerosmith” »

By Chris Kohler February 12, 2008 | 8:50:56 PM | Source: Wired

[Edit Mike: What a great interview, I wish I had Wired's clout]

AS VEGAS — Matsuura. Mizuguchi. The two men who created and innovated in the rhythm game genre long before Rock Band took over our living rooms spoke at this year’s DICE Summit, and Wired.com was able to get them both in a room together for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity — a head-to-head interview.

“We’re wasting our use of music,” said Masaya Matsuura, the creator of Parappa The Rapper, in his DICE speech. Music games must keep delivering fresh ideas, he said, or the genre “could be faced with a steep decline.”

“I decided to go into this industry because I could watch the future, literally,” said Tetsuya Mizuguchi, maker of Rez and Lumines, in his presentation.

With that as our starting point, we launched into a lively discussion about all aspects of music gaming. The results are below.
Continue Reading “Interview: Mizuguchi and Matsuura, Music Gaming Geniuses” »

We pulled this handy information from the Rock Band folks themselves - its just in a hidden little spot on their website.  This explains the thought process on the song choices this week… well, a little.  

The Police, Clash & Ramones DLC

Punk rock time again, yee-ha! Don’t tell us you didn’t want one more track from the Ramones, the Clash and, in one of their punkier moments, the Police. Only one of these three songs (the Clash) was a single rather than an album track, but all now stand with these bands’ most-loved moments.

Continue Reading “Harmonix Gives Insight into 2/12 DLC Choices” »