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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."
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!!!!
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.
~$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?
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.
Frets on Fire is great for what it is, but it isn't quite the same. When you screw up on Frets on Fire, the part you are supposed to be playing keeps right on playing. Assuming you have a guitar controller rigged up, you can't use the tremolo bar for anything. To some this may seem minor, but to others, that's a big part of how the game draws you in.
Probably never. Page and Plant have always been extremely reluctant to license Led Zeppelin songs. If you've seen the extras on the School of Rock DVD, you know that Jack Black had to literally beg to be allowed to use about 20 seconds of The Immigrant Song. You won't find Led Zeppelin on iTunes or any other (legal) online music service either.
SMQ 90AE4B2BC4F6BEAF7340F0B40BA2DEF7340F6BC2D0392
Guitar hero does not use a regular copy of the song. Most of the songs are re-recorded by Harmonix, and the song is split up into a track for the guitar part(s), and "the rest". So when a screw up occurs, the guitar track is stopped, while the rest of it keeps on playing. FoF allows audio files to be brought in, but these files do not have the instruments split into different tracks. It's already mixed.
I think the real question is "Why did the GH developers decide that the thing that really gets the crowd goin' is pounding the tremolo bar like an insane man? Is there a precedent for this in real life?"
"Never" in this context means "When Robert Plant and Jimmy Page die and the next generation greed of the people whose only connection to the music is a check, kicks in."
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
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.
I'm still waiting for some Floyd...that would so rock.
Go to a sushi restaurant and buy a set of sushi. Then go and buy each one à la Carte. Why is the set of sushi at a different price? you're getting the same sushi? It's called packaging.
Why is it that I can buy 100 of the same burnable dvds for 1 dollar a disc or less but a single dvd can cost me 2-3 dollars? Because bulk counts too.
Just so you know, in the game industry it works the same way, not just for consumers but you can buy a large amount of label music cheaper than just buying a single song. So there's a slight discount. The consumer bought a pack of 64 songs. Personally I'd have liked to buy 30 of the songs and skip 34 of them, however I'm still paying 50 dollars for them. There's no "choice" involved. These are optional additions and while they cost more, you're buying THESE songs, and choosing which ones to get, don't want to pay 6 dollars for ace of spades and bark at the moon? You don't have to.
Besides the easiest way to avoid this is not buying it. You don't need these tracks but some people want them (I'm in that group) and I'll pay the money for them.
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.