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Guitar Hero Downloadable Content Announced, Expensive
Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog has the word on the first three downloadable content packs for Guitar Hero II on the 360. The good news is that song selections include tracks like 'Ace of Spades', 'Killer Queen', and 'Bark at the Moon'. The bad news is that buying just three songs is 500 points. "The price of around $2 per song isn't outrageous, but it isn't generous either. I'd also prefer they allow you to buy each song alone, instead of being forced into the bundles. It's also worth noting that if you bought every song in the original Guitar Hero at this rate, you'd pay $97.92. Not exactly a compelling deal."
For the addicts out there, totally worth it.
I'd like to know what Ars Technica WOULD consider outrageous...
Anyway, here's where to send feedback to Red Octane about their pricing: http://www.redoctanegames.com/0_contact.asp
Considering there's more than just a song, there's the data needed to sync the game to the music.
Oh wait, Xbox
YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES HOW DARE YOU!!!!!!!!
Fuckin stuff doesnt even have FAIRPLAY on it TO PROTECT ME FROM EVIL
Wait until Guitar Hero comes out for Apple TV. APPLE "GETS IT"
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
When are we going to get some Led Zeppelin?
I'm sure it will be very expensive, but it would be quite thrilling to play "The Rain Song" and "Battle of Evermore." I can't wait!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
First off let's assume that Microsoft and RIAA takes around 1 dollar (aka Itunes) for the covers of these songs (which is sort of a double dip for RIAA since they can get you for the licensing and likely the music talent also) and Microsoft gets money for distributing the data (They take a good chunk off the top). Then you need the Harmonix group to separate the guitar tracks from the vocals, and the second guitar tracks from the vocals (why this has to be a live recording rather then using an MP3 from Itunes). Then finally you have to make a note chart for all four difficulties as well as a note chart for co-op. Test them to make sure they aren't too hard or easy. And then publish them.
Personally I think this price is fair. It's a touch high, but knowing the RIAA thought pattern I'm sure it's more than reasonable from their first suggestion.
I really REALLY like Harmonix. For the rest of this comment, I'm going to assume this is MS's doing, as I like Harmonix and think they are nicer to their users than this.
Let's review. I bought Guitar Hero, and loved it. I bought Guitar Hero 2, and loved it. I've been considering buying Guitar Hero 2 for the 360 (I'd have to buy a 360, which I plan to do when there are enough games I like) because of the downloadable content. I really love the game. I'm glad they are releasing songs from the original (come on Ziggy Stardust!). But let's get real.
Cost to buy all the tracks I liked from iTunes: $50 or so (since they didn't release a soundtrack for a music game... shame).
Or I can also get copies of the songs for Guitar Hero 2 for the 360, in groups of 3, at the low low price of OVER DOUBLE WHAT iTUNES CHARGES. Get serious. No go. I would be questioning a $1 price. This is insane. How about you let me stick my LEGAL, PURCHASED copy of the game in the drive and play the songs off it or copy them to the hard drive so I can play them? Sell me a $10 unlocker that lets me do this.
I was thinking of getting GH2 for the 360. I was thinking of maybe paying the $80 again. Forget it. If this is what songs will cost, they can just forget it.
This is an insult. No more, no less.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
~$2 a song seems VERY reasonable to me. I can understand the complaints when content is in $10 packs, but I think $5 packs is a good price point. And three songs for around $5 is pretty good in my opinion. People always complain about the price of downloadable add-on content. Sometimes it is justified, in this case the whining seems a bit absurd. I pay $5 for lunch, I pay $10 to see a movie, I'd gladly pay $5 for hours of video game entertainment. Don't you people remember arcades? Don't be so damn cheap and whiny.
I knew this would happen, and people were all happy about downloadable content for Guitar Hero! There are no bargains nor reasonable prices on the XBox Marketplace, its just the way it is. With these, you could buy the actual song for cheaper than that. Can we blame Red Octane, possibly, but with the recent Gears incident I don't think Microsoft are at all innocent in this
Did you get that thing I sent ya?
but that doesn't change my wallet's position. Oh well, in 50 years $2 songs will be a steal at double the price, right? And we'll be paying those prices for the same classic songs!
You could just get a real guitar, and a copy of Guitar Pro, and enjoy thousands of free tabbed songs on the web. You would also have the advantage of being able to actually play the songs on a real guitar! Am I missing something?
I wish they did this for Amplitude. It's a shame that there won't be any others (according to Harmonix).
If you accept the standard $1 a song set by iTunes, then $2 a song doesn't seem bad at all. Considering that they lay out different finger/strum patterns for 4 difficulty levels (Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert), and that it isn't just the song, but the song broken into a few different tracks to isolate the bass/2nd guitar, and lead guitar, the product is quite a bit more than the equivalent purchasable mp3. I'm not sure what cut goes back to the labels/artists, but I'd guess it's similar to iTunes' model.
Even bringing up the total cost of all songs seems disingenuous. People seem to enjoy the ability to buy individual songs without having to buy the whole CD (with associated filler music), and this is no different. Just pick up the packs you like --You don't HAVE to buy all of them.
Need proof? Guitar Hero 1 had maybe 30-35 songs, and was priced at $40 for just the game. Guitar Hero 2 for the 360 has around 50 songs, and minus the cost of the controller, it's about $50 alone. That's about $1-$1.25/song, and even lower if you count the cost of the game "shell" itself; a pretty good deal, seeing as you own the rights to use the physical media for eternity.
But, $2/song? For just the songs? Where is the extra cost coming from?
If I had to guess, the greedy developers.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
$2 a song seems entirely reasonable. Giving the price of every song on GH is a bogus comparision, because I doubt I'd have bought every song on GH if I'd been given the chance to cherry-pick.
The bundling is obnixious, though. It's like cable and satellite TV, where you pay extra for channels you'll never watch, just so you can get the one channel you actually want.
But compare it with other music-related deals in the marketplace. People pay ridiculous amounts of money for *ringtones* -- you don't even hear the whole song, but you pay many times what you would on iTunes.
People even pay for musical ringback tones (aka CallerTunes, etc) -- they *pay* to make *me* listen to their crappy taste in music. And as a bonus, I suspect I'm paying to listen to it with cell minutes that would have otherwise not been charged. No more "ring ring, hang up". What a deal for the wireless companies -- they get paid on both ends.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
...so I can play them on Frets On Fire?
Evidently I suck at GH, three new songs would give me at least couple hours of entertainment, compare it to going to a movie, and it's a freakin bargain.
I think people over-simplify the mechanics of GH, its not like your just downloading three mp3's. I certainly wish I could get the first two packs, unfortunately im stuck with the ps2 version.
Anyone who falls into the category of a Guitar Hero addict already owns all of these songs on Guitar Hero 1 for PS2.
But if that's a good deal to you, I'm also willing to sell you your own car. I'm also having a sale on that shirt and pants you're wearing. Totally worth it.
Some people are suggesting the price is fair when comparing it to music prices online.
The problem is, most XBox live users wont and aren't comparing it to that, they're comparing it to other XBox live content. When you can get Geometry Wars or some other 400 points game on XBox live for less than the price of a 3 song pack, the price of the songs becomes a whole lot less fair looking.
The cost of all 9 songs is more than 3x 400 point full games and is only 100 MS points short of 4 full games. It's also not far off (700 points) the cost of the new Oblivion expansion - shivering isles.
I think quite simply, a combination of of digital music still being rather expensive, Red Octane/Harmonix/MS wanting to squeeze as much out of customers for DLS as they can and then some of the 400 point games being reasonably priced is where where these complaints come from.
One final point worth noting is also that $2 per song is reasonable to some people here, but do those people still find it reasonable if only one of the songs out of the 3 are worth having? That essentially makes it $6 per song you want if you're forced to have 2 songs you neither want nor will ever play.
I do think the DLC for Guitar Hero could be handled a whole lot better - I'll admit I'm new to Harmonix/Red Octane games, they seem to have a pretty decent fanbase but as a first time customer to them, I'm not terribly impressed thus far. I received one of the faulty Guitars and have still yet to hear officially from them (via their site or if they bother to respond to my e-mails) as to how I'm meant to get it replaced - couple that with less than impressive DLC thus far and I have to say they have a long way to go to get in my good books.
At this level of pricing, to purchase all 47 tracks from GH1 would cost roughly 7,850 points or $98 USD. That does not sound reasonable. So much for Activision extending the life of GH2 by allowing to you purchase content, it looks like they're more interested in milking GH2 for all that it's worth until the release of GH3 (which is coming out sooner than it should).
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
As for the person that made the comment aobut how everything with XBox Live Marketplace being absurdly overpriced let me offer a counter view. I've had the 360 since shortly after it came out, and not until the last few months did I start buying actual 360 games for it. I do, however, have a TON of "XBox Live Arcade" games downloaded. The one I play the most, Texas Hold 'Em, I got while it was offered as a free download. And you know what? I've gotten more enjoyment from the Arcade games offered, at worst about $10 a pop, than I have out of most $50 games I've purchased. Those I generally play through, then lose interest. I will occasionally revisit them (The Sonic Mega Collection I got for the original XBox was one of the best games I'd purchased in a long time, just because it had all the Sonic Goodness (plus some of the mistakes) in one package. I barely play the Sonic games anymore. It isn't that I don't like them, but I've played them a lot. They dont' change much. In a single player game, once you've gone through it, unless it's a TRULY DYNAMIC game, there's not really much left to it. That's where multiplayer comes into play. If the multiplayer fails, the game fails. It has no replay value. With downloadable content, that changes things. Guitar Hero also has the added benefit of being able to play against, or with other people. It has ALL the makings of a GREAT game, with GREAT replay value.
Am I willing to shell out a bit more for a game that is going to provide me with countless hours of good clean fun? Damn straight I am. Everyone else can go sit in a corner and whine and cry all they want, in the meantime I'm going to crank up the sound, and have fun.
It's funny, the most enjoyable games I've played to date on the XBox 360 have been Guitar Hero II, some DDR style game my roomate bought, Texas Hold 'Em, Worms, Need for Speed: Most Wanted. I didn't even buy NFS because I knew the replay value on it would suck. Still, it was fun to cruise around in my souped up Pink Mitsubishi. You hear on the radio "Suspect is driving a Pink Mitsubishi". But we just got the Guitar, and DDR game. We've mostly just been playing Arcade games ont he 360. Oh, and Geometry Wars, can't believe I almost left that one out. FANTASTIC. Other than that, our 360 is used to stream media from our computers. The 360 is far and above the pittance we paid for it (We have the Premium one, 1st-gen when they still came with the media remote), and the content is thus far, more than worth what we pay. I've considered purchasing television episodes from the marketplace as well, and if I could offload them to my computer, I would without hesitation.
Paying for additional content that is probably, in most cases, left out of the game originally just for this purpose? It's disgusting, and is going to ruin gaming even more than it becoming mainstream popular already had. But hey, whatever, maybe the console kiddies of today just don't know what it was like ten years ago, when the companies would not only continue to add to and patch their games for years to come but also support dedicated groups of unpaid individuals who wanted nothing more than to work hard and release large scale mods... for free! This aspect of PC gaming is going to quickly die out if people continue to be stupid enough to pay for financially insignificant content (horse armor?!)
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
I'm not paying a fucking cent for Killer Queen. That's one of the most awful crap songs I've ever heard. I'd be embarrassed to play it. I don't really like Queen in the first place, but they could at least release "Stone Stone Crazy" or "Another One Bites the Dust", not sappy shit-rock like Killer Queen.
I suppose next we'll be 'treated' to more shit like Bohemian Rhapsody. What a let down when they had that shit song on Wayne's World.
I'd like to have Bark at the Moon, but if I'm forced to get Killer Queen, I'll just skip the whole thing.
We're averaging zero on the three pack:
+1: Bark at the Moon
0: Ace of Spades - just average. I tend to ignore it on the radio
-1: Killer Queen - Once again, are you fucking kidding me?
The Guitar Hero II software program launched for $49.99. Let's forget for a moment that the guitar was a separate $30 item since the subject at hand is the cost of the software and music. The program came packed with 40 mainstream songs and 24 "B-List" titles by less popular bands. So there is a licensing cost for those 64 songs. Let's not forget, though, that they also had to go to the trouble of developing the game itself, the models, the menus, graphics, etc..
That means that the total cost of developing the software, licensing the songs, and distributing it to stores was 78 cents per song. And don't forget that includes money to develop and market the game.
How can they not see the disparity here? Anything more than 78 cents per track is too high. Let's throw in 22 cents of Microsoft Tax in there and make it an even One Dollar. That is the price point they should sell these at. Go ahead and bundle them, but charging more than a buck per track is outrageous.
They choose a value p such that s(p)×p > s(p+1)×(p+1) and s(p)×p > s(p-1)×(p-1), where s(p) is an estimate of the total sales at price p.
Now then. Let's look at what happens to this equation when we add the extra costs of transcription t. Well, looks like there's no t in the equation, so what happens is nothing at all! So even if they could get the content for free, and convert it for free, they'd still charge the same amount for them because this maximises their profits, and maximising profits is what a typical business tries to do.
Trying to justify the price on grounds of cost of production is extremely naive.
There seems to be a misunderstanding of sound engineering here. In this current day and age, it's not possible to seperate different instruments/vocals into separate tracks from a master recording (with a few RARE exceptions). Mixing sound only really happens in one direction, you can mix a multi-track studio recording into a single track master recording, but not a single track recording into a multi-track recording. Guitar Hero requires separate tracks for the guitars/basses so that they can be fed through the corresponding stereo channels (if it's multiplayer, etc.) and so they can be partially muted when you miss notes without having to mute the entire song (note that the rest of the band is still playing when you screw up). This is why almost all of the songs had to be covers, so they could be re-recorded into multiple tracks during a studio recording. Notice that the few songs that aren't covers are all recently new and recorded, and I can gaurantee Guitar Hero was given the multi-track studio recordings to these songs, which is the only reason that they would need to make a cover in the first place. That being said, all the original Guitar Hero songs probably had to record new Training tracks and CO-OP tracks (unless they happened to keep their studio recordings from the first game with a bass track), so they had to do atleast SOME work to move these tracks to Guitar Hero 2. $2 is still kinda high I think though....
Packaging, eh? The cost to "package" a download is essentially zero. Someone has to put the songs together into the Xbox360 equivalent of a ZIP file and then post them to the Marketplace. It's different when there is a physical product involved (i.e. sushi or single burnable discs). Comparatively, the packaging and distribution costs of a download are a trivial sum.
I'm not sure whether Redoctane or Microsoft deserves the greater share of the blame here. Whoever is responsible is counting on the customer not to have the same attitude you do - namely that there is a non-trivial cost to packaging and distributing a download. I'm not getting equivalent value for my dollar to download the track versus buying an entire game at retail.
As others have mentioned, there's more to this than the RIAA "double-dipping":
-The fingering charts. As others noted, RedOctane employees have made these charts for four levels, and any StepMania fan knows that it's not quite an easy job to match icons to timed, sometimes rhythmically-complex music. RedOctane has skilled musicians/nerds doing this dirty work, and they require money.
-Re-recording the songs. A lot of people are missing this--maybe because the covers on Guitar Hero are so well-performed and recorded. Not only are some older releases (think the 60s and 70s rock) not up to scuff in quality, but one must think about the track issue. To think that each artist's studio has kept each individual track in storage for decades is naieve, and that's even assuming that RedOctane had access to the studios' recordings--or that some of the originals were even recorded track-by-track.
We're also assuming that even IF RedOctane had access to each track AND that they were, as a whole, up to scuff, that, when soloed, the bass/drum tracks alone or guitar track(s) soloed are absolutely perfect in technique.
Re-recording songs takes expensive studio time (the tracks are well-produced) and bands also cost money. Not only the cover bands, but:
-RIAA, record label, and royalty fees. It goes without saying that each part are taking their fair (or, in the case of the RIAA, maybe not so fair...) share for each song licensed.
-Microsoft and game production fees. I'm not an expert on how Microsoft and publishers push online content, but I assume someone's paying for the bandwidth these downloads chew up--and it may be the developers/publishers.
Clearly, with all the fees involved, $2 isn't so bad: Microsoft's refusal to sell the songs a-la-carte is just annoying.
"You could just get a real guitar, and a copy of Guitar Pro, and enjoy thousands of free tabbed songs on the web. You would also have the advantage of being able to actually play the songs on a real guitar! Am I missing something?"
Getting good at the guitar takes years of dedicated practice. I've played for over a quarter century. People who buy Guitar Hero are looking to play a game. That means they want something that makes them happy immediately - and it does.
Plus, Guitar Hero is what... $70 or so? Add up a guitar and lessons for a few years, and perhaps you'll see why Guitar Hero is the better bargain for gamers.
But will it have Dragonforce?
Wow... I can't believe the outrage. I'm guessing it's mostly stemmed from the disinformation that the original guitar hero game had 47 songs in it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_hero
Sorry, the 17 independent songs don't count. There are only 30 career mode tracks, which are the ones anyone would care about. If you bought all of these, it would be $62.50. Fine, a bit pricey but most people will only buy what they really like. They should bundle all 30 songs for 40-50 bucks, but it's not a big deal. I'll definitely buy maybe three or four packs (20 bucks worth) and be completely happy with it.
I just hope they release the upcoming 80s pack on 360 via downloadable content. The price point is perfect.
I don't agree with the assessment that GH2 for 360 was "half finished". It is a great game, out of the box.
HOWEVER, I specifically held off from buying the PS2 version, so that I could wait for the 360, because of the promise of downloadable songs. I figured they would release all of the original GH1 songs for about $40 or less (based on the fact that you can buy it for PS2 for $40). And then there would be the option to get new songs. That made it worth the wait.
But now I feel I made the wrong decision. I should have just bought GH1 and GH2 w/guitar for PS2 months ago.
Consider this: GH1 + GH2w/guitar + PS2 system (refurb at ebgames) = $210 (available now)
GH2w/guitar for 360 + all songs from GH1 (assuming they are released at same rate) = $188. (all songs available in months after they trickle out)
Seems to me, option 1 is a much better deal, even if you have to buy the PS2 system. I'm sorry, but for this type of game, having the graphics in HD is really not worth that much.
I'm surprised that none of the replies (at least not the rated ones) have posed the following question:
I wonder how many people who were either unable to find GH2 to date, or were (like I was, emphasis on the _was_) waiting until DLC pricing was available, that are now lost GH2 sales due to DLC pricing.
I don't know about you, but I was holding out on DLC pricing before buying GH2. They haven't just lost a few six dollar sales. They've lost a few six dollar sales plus one GH2 bundle plus one extra GH2 guitar plus the value of me having all my friends over and getting them hooked and going to the store to buy one for themselves. I wonder how many other sales they just lost beyond mine?
Good luck with RO customer support. I had to get my controller replaced shortly after buying the first game right after it came out. It took around 4 months. By the time I got it, my rabid enthusiasm for the game had waned quite a bit, naturally. At one point they lost my "ticket", so for a period of several weeks I didn't even exist as far as they were concerned.
I'd look for a do-it-yourself fix, or buy a third-party wireless (TAC or somesuch, if they make 360 versions...) while you're waiting.
Everybody loved PS2 GH2.
360 GH2 is the same, but with better graphics and more songs.
The downloadable content is just an extra option, to buy if you want it - that's all.
If you think it's too much, don't buy it and just enjoy the game you've already got.
Personally I did wince a little bit at the price, but it does show they're going to support the game and hopefully if they make enough cash from selling the extra songs - they might full their f'in finger out and patch the game to give online play.
I don't know how old you are, but you really are coming off like a crybaby. What if there were NO downloadables? You'd still be buying the game at the current price. So you don't like the download prices? Then don't buy them. But to whine you won't buy the original game, that you WERE interested in and already planned on purchasing is just stupid.
I agree that GH1 and GH2 are complete games, great games even. I do not believe that it justifies the pricing announced for downloadable content. The problem is that they are essentially asking you to re-buy content that you may have already purchased, at a premium over what you would have already paid!
This isn't the first time this has happened either. My wife loves Karaoke Revolution (also by Harmonix), as do all of our friends that we've shown it to. We have three versions of Karaoke Revolution for the PS2, and STILL got the Xbox version because of the lure of downloadable content. The problem with Karaoke Revolution is that there are too many versions, well technically the problem is that you cannot access content between versions, but that's splitting hairs.
When we bought KR1 for Xbox, we also bought the few (five?) song packs that were available for download (all were songs that we already owned on PS2 discs). The reason was that when we played we'd have a single track list to choose from (different people like different songs, obviously). Afterwards, when KR Party was released (also on Xbox) ALL of the songs from KR 1-3 (on PS2) were now available for download (it might have been earlier then that, but that's when we noticed that they were available). As mentioned above we'd already bought some of them, and were getting ready to buy the rest (again, single track list) until we saw the total (~$90 for the additional tracks we hadn't already bought). At this point we'd bought 4-5 versions of KR, owned ALL of the songs that were available to buy (and then some), and were being asked to buy them again for a Premium, just to be able to have access to all of them without swapping discs.
Why is there no way to rip/copy tracks off of the game discs that you already own? I wouldn't even mind if I had to verify each disk before playing. I'd gladly (well, not gladly but I'd do it) take the 3-5 minutes to place each disc in the tray to appease the "copy protection" concerns of the rent-and-rip variety, if only I could. Instead, I am asked to re-buy content that has already been sold to me (more then once already in the case of KR).
I understand that the GH1 tracks on the 360 have added features (Rhythm/Bass Guitar for multiplayer, etc) and I'd even be willing to pay a small fee for a patch to add that capability to my ripped tracks (or have the option not to, and just play them as they originally were included, if I so chose).
According to Wikipedia, Frets on Fire will already do this, so why not GH or KR? I'd gladly give these companies (Harmonix or otherwise) my money for the convenience of not setting up a PC game to play on my TV, but at this point I'm thinking about moving over to FoF for good. I have never played FoF, but being able to rip songs, use my official GH controllers (instead of the keyboard), and download USER CREATED songs as well makes it sound like FoF is offering everything that GH isn't.
FOR FREE.
Seems steep to me...considering that
A) these are COVERS of the songs, which is a less expensive license to purchase.
B) How much did it cost Red Octane to bring over the old tracks to the current game ( not much i'm guessing ) and
C) An I-tunes version of the songs would cost 99 cents per. Which comes with the risk of then becoming " pirated ". where in GHII the songs aren't susceptible to the same level piracy ( arrrrg ) who'd pirate a crappy cover of " Bark at the Moon " anyway.