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Guitar Hero Gets New Developer
GameDaily is reporting that the much loved Guitar Hero series seems to have been given over to new developers. NeverSoft, makers of Gun and the Tony Hawk series of games, are now advertising open positions on their Guitar Hero team. Harmonix, Activision, and Neversoft are all mum on the development at this point, but it's hard to argue with a big 'hiring' sign. Notably, Neversoft appears to be hiring for a PlayStation 3 version of the game. From the article: "Neversoft is undoubtedly filled with much talent, but we're not quite sure why RedOctane would give the development duties to them after Harmonix created two hugely successful games. Guitar Hero II really cranked it up to 11 with sales of more than 805 K units in December alone in the U.S. In fact, according to recent NPD data, the game was the fifth best selling game for all of 2006 with 1.3 million units sold in the U.S."
Will this have any effect on quality?
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
BOOOOOOOOOO
*hiss*
Bad Activision. Bad. Take a game from a great developer who basically IS music games that aren't DDR (Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II) on the main consoles, and give it to... Neversoft. Who hasn't made a music game. Who took their successful and great Tony Hawk games and kept grinding out sequels as the series went into the ground, adding in features to make it "extreme" like THUG, THUG2, etc. The games are getting closer and closer to being BMX: XXX.
Bye bye Guitar Hero. You were a great series. I was hoping you'd bring on more music games. Now you'll just be a "what went so wrong" post somewhere by this time next year.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Now we'll get to play Guitar Hero XTREME! featuring all those terrible punk rock bands you had hoped never existed.
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
reading this one's postmortem in Game Developer or gamasutra in 12 months.
I'm surprised that anyone would be planning a PS3 version of guitar hero any time soon. From the point of view of sales, it is a loosing proposition. I mean, look at the numbers. The sales numbers that TFA claims for GH2 just about equal the number of PS3s that have been sold in total. Assuming that Sony manages to triple the number of PS3s in homes by the time they release the next Guitar Hero, they would still need to sell a copy to 1 in 3 PS3 owners just to equal the first month's sales of GH2. That is not going to happen. For at least the next year, developing for the PS3 is going to be a losing proposition for developers.
Why are they asking "Why did Red Octane give over development to Neversoft?"?
Because Activision owns Red Octane and by extension the Guitar Hero brand. So if Activision wants Neversoft to make a game, then that's what happens. I don't quite blame them seeing as how Activision has in-house development teams.
Plus, would you really want Harmonix to make it, knowing full well they've been bought out by MTV?
I have some faith in Neversoft. They did provide us with the excellent Spiderman game for the PSX.
My twitter
Do we really want a company now owned, unfortunately, by MTV in charge of a game about music?
I'd hate to see our precious Guitar Hero slowly transformed from "All Music, All the Time" into a reality-TV-like Sims starring drunk and likely bi-polar college age kids with little or no personality.
Its best this game stay as far away from MTV as possible.
I'd be perfectly happy if they just made a dozen or more expansions for it. Same exact thing as Guitar Hero II, but with new bands and music. Who wouldn't buy a new Guitar Hero II "rock-pack"(or name it something simmilar - doesn't really matter) every year? New groups, new challenges. Same basic great game. No real need to turn it over to a whole new company, either.
Jet Moto 1 and 2 were made by Singletrac (I think was the company) and were excellent. They were bought out by Sony, who let another team make the 3rd game. It sucked. Why should it be any different for Guitar Hero, who's original company has been bought out by MTV? I think that that was when the series officially died.
Is there any reason to believe that these guys aren't just responsible for the PS3 port of GH2?
They're talking about trying to knock out 3 ports of GH2 this year, and GH3 by the end of the year as well.
I wouldn't be surprised if that's just too much for Red Octane/Harmonix to tackle without a little outsourcing.
Already exists. It's called Frets On Fire. Tons of songs available if you look around a bit, and you can even use a Playstation guitar controller if you get a Playstation-to-USB adapter.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
That being said, the developer of GH has tried to use the original records when they were made available in a format that can be used in guitar hero. This requires the original master tracks. At the bare minimum a master for the Guitar, the Bass/Rythm (in the case of GH2) and a final one for everything else. You are going to have a hard time finding these for records made prior to 10 or so years as these things get lost, destroyed or disposed of. Even if the originals are available they need to get the rights to use those originals from the current rights holder which is often difficult, or expensive, to do. Your typical music CD has 10 tracks at most. GH had 50+ tracks and GH 2 had 55+ tracks with a fair number of those being the original records. Purchasing those alone, assuming you bough them separate or in some compilation would cost far more than the game, and that is with out the actual game itself. Not only that some of the songs are actually better when performed by Wave Group than they are by the original artist (more so on GH than GH2). But that last bit is just an opinion
I had more problem's with You Really Got Me being credited to Van Halen. I know there cover was popular, but the Kinks made it famous first, darn it! It's not like it wasn't a hit before VH got hold of it.
I wasn't aware there were people out there who purchased games only to listen to the music. Personally, I like playing them, but that's just me.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
According to this article at GamesAreFun (which cites GameSpot as its source) Activision recently filed for trademarks for "Guitar Villain" and "Drum Villain."
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Yes, I really think Dave can sing, and I don't see what my delusional tendencies have to do with it. He's got that killer growl in his voice that's just perfect for that kind of music. Could you imagine Megadeth without Dave Mustaine?
However, if you want to hear exceptional vocals in metal, you have to listen to some Nevermore. Just incredible.
I am so sick of the metal that's come out the last few years with these dorks trying to sound tough by growling all the time and instead sound like they're having a tough time taking a shit. I detest vomit metal.
The guy in the GH version sounds like a pussy. It's embarrassing to hear the way he does the end of the song. I have to explain to people who aren't familiar with Megadeth that it is just a cover version and the original is far better.