Music Game Competition Heats Up

With Guitar Hero: World Tour set to launch on October 26th, Activision has released a list of downloadable content that will be immediately available. Activision has also apparently included a trailer for Guitar Hero: Metallica (which will arrive sometime next year), and they recently trademarked the name 'Guitar Hero Modern Hits,' which may be part of their plan to increase the amount of Guitar Hero content they produce. Meanwhile, new Rock Band 2 DLC tracks are coming as well, and the release dates for the PS2, PS3, and Wii versions have been set. Early reports say the Wii version made the platform jump better than the original Rock Band, and that all currently existing DLC will be available for Rock Band 2. MTV's Multiplayer blog took a look at Wii Music, which creator Shigeru Miyamoto calls, "Not quite a game and not quite an instrument."

Comments

Music authoring

[Enderandrew]

I think this will be huge. Guitar Hero: World Tour lets you actually put new music in the game. Plenty of people will be putting in covers of copyrighted music, but I'm think small local bands will use Guitar Hero to promote their music in grassroots type of way. I'd love to see the first band that gets a record contract because their song was a top download through Guitar Hero. It will happen.

Frets on Fire FTW! (GPL)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/

Bah

[Brenky]

I, for one, hope GHWT bombs (at least in a critical sense - I know it'll sell like hotcakes). Neversoft had the gall to call themselves the first music game in which you could play as guitar, bass, drums and vocals months after Rock Band was released. Harmonix is a pioneer of music games, and just because they couldn't get Hendrix or Halen doesn't mean the quality of the game is any worse. I take my music game rivalries very seriously.

Market Saturation

[HBI]

I think we've reached that point. Also, the music industry is making money off this. I thought we hated the RIAA?