Rock Band As the Costly New MTV?

With the announcement of Rock Band, fans of the Guitar Hero series are well and truly pleased. Despite the fact that GH controllers will work with the game, with all the peripherals the game is going to be ridiculously expensive, assuming you want to get an entire band together. "Specifically, the 'Rock Band Wireless Guitar Controller' will retail at $79.99 (40 quid approx), the standard 'Rock Band Guitar Controller' at $59.99 (30 quid approx), the 'Rock Band Drum Set' $79.99 and the 'Rock Band Microphone' at $39.99 (20 quid approx)." Beyond that, though, Kotaku's Brian Crecente takes a look at the game in a broader context, wondering aloud if the game will be a new version of MTV ... or at least, a new version of the way MTV used to be. Introducing new bands, songs, and sounds to consumers via videogames seems like a fairly natural way of trying things.

Comments

Re:Depends...

[Seumas]

I can't understand the excitement over these games either. If you're going to put hours and hours and hours into pretending to play an instrument, why not put those hours into actually learning to play the instrument?

On the other hand, pretending to play an instrument and "is this the new MTV" really are a couple sentiments that belong together.

Real if allowing creation...

[SuperKendall]

The thing about Guitar Hero is that you are just matching buttons to elements on a screen. That is what makes it not really very "real"...

But if you played earlier games from Harmonix like Frequency, they supported modes that really did let you create music. You had fewer options note-wise than with a full keyboard, but many tracks of instruments - you could come up with some really different stuff that way. That's what I expect to see out of Rock Band, and even if it's fewer notes than you could get out of a real guitar if you are choosing among several notes and choosing when they play, along with what instruments play when... that is real.

I'm sure playing the game will be the same, but people creating remixes which are essentially whole new songs is what excites me.

Freezepop even had a remix contest where fans did remixes on a Freezepop song "Science Genius Girl" in Frequency and submitted it to the bad for evaluation, the winning track was included on a CD with some of their other music.