Rock Band, Casual Games Headline EA's E3 Offering

The EA focus on family-oriented content, casual games, and expanding the gaming audience echoed the statements made at the Nintendo press conference earlier today. Next Generation has an overview of the EA press conference, which highlighted titles like Boogie and EA Playground. The company's cellphone game lineup also received some attention, and will feature properties such as Madden, Harry Potter, and Bejeweled. EA's ultimate goal is to 'lock up the 200 million casual gamers'. The presentation ended with a long Rock Band session; it was revealed that Metallica will play a heavy hand in the game's lineup. Other tracks shipping with the game at launch include: The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again," David Bowie's "Suffragette City," Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive," Rush's "Tom Sawyer," Nirvana's "In Bloom," Stone Temple Pilots' "Vaseline," and Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly."

Comments

Of course!

[An Ominous Coward]

it was revealed that Metallica will play a heavy hand in the game's lineup

And after the whole Napster deal, we know how heavy-handed Metallica can be.

Metallica

[ucblockhead]

They say Rock Band will ship with "Enter Sandman". Weird. I've never heard of that song. I just hope it's as good as that awesome track I got off of Napster: "3ntar s4ndmn".

Peripherals Galore

[Anonymous Coward]

The game looks quite innovative (surpised that EA has a hand in that) and I really believe that this game will change the way people think about games. After all, Harmonix started as a research group in MIT's Media Lab where they're trying to do stuff like bridge the gap between Second Life and real life. However, I don't think the game will be as successful as it should be.

My prediction is that the game will be released, but it won't be as popular as everyone hopes because of the high entry cost. Sure, I would love to be able to play my favorite music sim with people across the world, but why should I shell out $50-$80 for an electronic drum set or a microphone or a different guitar (because I doubt the SG controller from Guitar Hero will work on this) when I already paid $50 for a Guitar Hero controller that works just fine on Guitar Hero? The casual gamer doesn't want to spend needless amounts of money on peripherals every time you release a new game. Then on top of it, they expect you to pay even more money for extra songs. I don't like this business model and I hope they do something to fix it. Until then, I'll stick to GH3.

Re:What's with all the licensing of Rush's music..

[xero314]

A few years ago Rush was only popular in circles of Rush fans mostly being dismissed by the mainstream I'm guessing you are either not in the US or Canada, or are 12.

You would be hard pressed to find a musician or rock music fan (the target audience of guitar based music games) that has never heard of Rush. Everywhere in the US I have ever lived Rush has received regular airplay.

Re:Wonder what this will do to sales of GH3

[trdrstv]

I wonder what effect this will have on the sales of GH3. I love GH2, and have two controllers, but would hesitate to buy the next one if only a few months later I could get a game that would allow more friends to join in and probably be twice as fun. Especially, as the cost of adding the drums and mic will not be trivial.

There's a reason GH III is shipping before Rock Band... It HAS to. If I were Activision I would be pissed. They bought the GH franchise for something like 200 million dollars, and already the people who sold it to them have a "GH Killer". They need to get GHIII out faster than October, and load up with DLC (include some for Free too) to help lock people into that franchise.