Next Year's Madden, Others to Get Music Download Service
Joystiq is reporting that next year's version of Madden, and other subsequent EA games, will offer the ability to download new background music tracks. They have not yet said if this would be a pay-per-song service. "It might seem a bit silly for EA to offer a proprietary music download service when all current-gen consoles allow users to create their own custom soundtracks from their already-existing digital music collections. You have to realize, though, that EA needs to offer its own downloads so it can [...] gently suggest the latest hot track from Kid Rock to their captive audience of millions of players."
What ever happened to where game makers would create their own songs and people would buy the soundtrack? I remember back in the SNES/Genesis age, a lot of people would hum various Mario/Sonic tunes, sure they might have been low-quality but they were catchy. At least RPGs still have original soundtracks, I really don't want to play an RPG while hearing *insert song here* when an orchestrated soundtrack would be better. A theme song like on Namco's Tales games would be Ok, but really, do I even want to hear Kid Rock while I am playing a game? And even pay for it? No.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.