Slashdot Mirror
Guitar Hero and Rock Band See Huge Downloads, Increasing Music Sales
log1385 writes "More than 5 million songs have been sold as downloads for Guitar Hero III since November, and Rock Band has seen some 2.5 million downloads just in the last two months. These games are positive financial experiences for music labels outside of the Xbox Live/PlayStation Networks, as well. Songs included in the two games have seen bumps in popularity through other commercial outlets as well. Though not huge, they are noticeable enough to prompt future projects. 'MTVN already has plans to expand its outreach to artists, creating additional game expansions -- as both physical products and downloadable content -- around specific music genres and even artists. "We are talking to tons of bands, from indie to the most established ... to release not necessarily their entire catalog, but maybe some of their classic albums and do special packages around that," [MTV division president Van Toffler] said.'" Rock Band has certainly worked on me - I've been buying tracks to listen to the drum parts.
If there is no option to purchase new tracks for the Wii version, the limitation is probably the Wii's Shopping Channel. Having both a 360 and a Wii, I'm firmly of the opinion that the Wii's Shopping Channel is a pale imitator of the 360's Live Marketplace. The Shopping Channel is far too slow to load and navigate, and as far as I can tell there is no 3rd party content on there currently. How did you expect them to sell you the additional songs if Nintendo won't let them sell the content via the Shopping Channel?
Is that we have way more people who want to play than we have instruments to play! 4 (or 3 when one is broken and getting fixed) instruments really has a hard time holding up 10 players! It was extra-worse when we had a guitar out for (non-cross-ship) repair. We've lost two guitars and one foot pedal so far -- they needed to build in a lot more durability in those, c'mon folks, engineering like this is not rocket science.
Also: bring back the strum bar microswitches! (GH1/2/'80s stock guitars)
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
If I was a lesser known artist, I'd try to get all of my music into games. Hell, who had heard of Jonathan Coulton before Portal?
Actually that's not the greatest example I think because he was actually pretty well known even before portal - Code Monkey being the most recognizable song, but also "Re: Your Brains" was quite popular and he was getting by OK just from music sales on his website.
Still, your primary point is an excellent one, I would never have known Freezepop if it wasn't for Frequency.... A great song in a great game means instant memories, and that's something you'll want to listen to again and again.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
As usual, Wikipedia is a decent starting point, but doesn't include all the relevant information. Yes, the game was developed by Neversoft, however the PS2 port was done by Budcat Creations (see: http://www.budcat.com/games.htm) and the Wii port was done by Vicarious Visions (see: http://www.vvisions.com/games/details.cfm?ID=105). I suspect that the lack of DLC for Wii is a combination of limitations of the store and the Wii's small internal storage. A single DLC pack would take up over 10% of the Wii's internal storage space.
Sturgeon was an optimist.