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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."
Though that is true (You won't see many PS3 exclusives for quite a while, because it isn't worth it) you only have to take in more money than it costs to port it from the 360 version (considering the 360 and PS3 both support USB for the guitar). That and this offers an upgrade path for those who have the GH games from the PS2.
In truth is would be better to keep the PS2 line and offer a PS3 compatible guitar.
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.
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