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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.
The songs get a bunch of free exposure, and most of the songs on Guitar Hero are pretty good songs to begin with. Unfortunately for the music biz, I already own all the songs legally that I want from Guitar Hero, so no bump in sales from me, I haven't paid for any of the packs yet, though I do like the Halo Mix.
I guess Wii fucked you. HA HA HA HA
Sincerely,
Harmonix Inc.
As a 37 year old step father, I get a real kick out of seeing my step-son getting into Aerosmith, Kiss, The Who and other classic/hard rock acts on iTunes. Some of them were around in my formative years, and Guitar Hero has now made the younger generation realize how good a lot of these songs are too. He got Guitar Hero 3 + a $25 iTunes card for Christmas, and most of the songs he's downloaded have come from the Guitar Hero series.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
You take a mans love for music, and give him the ability to interact with it without much skill required, or money. This is a great way to success. I love playing drums. Even more I love playing to some of my favorite songs. You really get into it and feel like your apart of it.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
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)
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This is exactly what I DON'T want to happen. Record companies start to realize that if they can get their songs into the games they might stand to make a buck. They'll start slipping Red Octane bribes to place their songs in the lineup. Then the games will become just as watered down as CD's are now. We'll end up paying (assuming we still support the game) sixty bucks for a game with four songs we actually enjoy and the rest will be crap.
I can see it now, Guitar hero XXXVII: Brittany and the Constantine ROCK THE NEW MILLENNIUM
Captcha: Dwindled, how fitting...
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.
The problem is that the Wii only has 512 MB internal memory. That isn't very many tracks. So far, Nintendo has been crippling games's ability to either run off of or access information off of additional memory cards, so the obvious solution is out. Really, if they made a minor firmware update to allow the Wii to access Virtual Console and other downloaded content directly off of SD cards, it would simplify a lot of things, from downloaded original games to expansion packs.
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.
I've actually noticed a few problems with my version of Guitar Hero's Legends of Rock. Somehow, it contains a song written by Disturbed. I expect this problem to be fixed soon...