Tag Archive for "Opinion"
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 spent the weekend playing music games. With the number of releases that have recently come out, we’ve spent a lot of time covering the game news but not actually getting to enjoy the product. Well that changed, thankfully, but now back to more coverage as we review the AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack. If you’re an AC/DC fan, you’re probably going to want to pick this one up.
Most people were a little confused when the AC/DC announcement came, making the incorrect (or correct?) assumption that this was just additional DLC for Rock Band 2. When specified that the entire track pack was a standalone game, and could be purchased only at Walmart (in the form of a disc - not downloadable), gamers fumed that Harmonix was converting to Activision’s model of making full album DLC the norm, rather than allowing the flexibility of picking and choosing individual songs. However, gamers soon learned that if they purchased the Rock Band branded AC/DC game, they would also receive a code which would make all songs downloadable and therefore playable within Rock Band. All of this is true. So, the question becomes then, why have a standalone game at all?
Regardless of the why, here’s what we found.
Continue Reading “RockGamer Review: AC/DC LIVE: Rock Band Track Pack” »
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” »
After the jump we have the newest video vignettes showing Neversoft’s motion capture work with rock and roll stars Hayley Williams of Paramore and frontman Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins. While I was watching the Hayley video, my thoughts were, this looks exciting! I think I’d like to be mo-capped too! But the more I watched, the more I thought, ok, but it wasn’t me, so do I care? Neversoft has put quite a bit of time and money into making sure Guitar Hero World Tour contains a ton of famous playable characters (Sting, Zakk Wylde, Corgan, Williams, Jimi Hendrix etc). I’m not sure I’m going to enjoy that any more than just playing as ”RockGamerJen”. Take a look and tell us what you think. Is it exciting to be able to play as, or play along with these superstars? Will this help boost Guitar Hero’s sales?
Continue Reading “Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Pumpkins Billy Corgan Mo-Capped for GHWT” »
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?
This morning I woke up with mixed feelings. I’ve listened to “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” since the day I bought it on old cassette tape many, many years ago. I can sing along with probably 14 of the 16 songs on the album as accurately as I could recite the Pledge of Allegiance in school. I’m a HUGE RHCP fan.
Now with that out of the way, here’s where my fur is getting rubbed the wrong way. My favorite Chili Peppers song ever is “Sir Psycho Sexy”. I’ve been wondering in my mind over the last few weeks since Harmonix announced it as an upcoming DLC album, exactly what the vocal track on this song (among others) would contain. Today I found out.
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” »
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