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.

Re:Music authoring

[bmorency]

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.

The director of Guitar Hero World Tour said they will remove songs that have a copyright. Here is the link quoting the guy. http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/29/guitar-hero-world-tour-wont-condone-your-awful-cover-songs/

Re:Music authoring

[corsec67]

The director of Guitar Hero World Tour said they will remove songs that have a copyright.

If they take down all songs that have a copyright,... how do they have any songs at all?

Re:Music authoring

[dontmakemethink]

The authoring function would be great for indie bands who could presumably make their songs available for GH:WT play.

Then I watched a YouTube clip of a "music studio" demo given by one of the developers. The painfully obvious and much simpler approach would be for bands could simply transfer their actual multitrack audio (separate drum, bass, guitar, vocal and backing tracks) then just program corresponding controller movements for gameplay.

But no, that would interfere with one of the key revenues the game generates, promoting the real music added to the game, which undoubtedly is not free to the copyright owners of the music, all of which are signed to RIAA labels. Instead there is a music editor for you to create music within the game, limited to the game controllers for input, presumably without vocals at all. That's why musicians spend thousands on gear and recording, so they can broadcast their music from a toy studio.

From the demo: "We're trying to provide the community with everything we can" ...except the most important tools for the most in need. Next time pull the RIAA cock out of your ass before deciding what is or isn't good for music.

Another quote to show just how far off point these guys are: "I want to see a band perform live on stage with Guitar Hero controllers." Do these people not know where music comes from?

People wanking away with their fave tunes at home is one thing, but invading the arena of live performance is completely cannibalistic. The next generation of music will be lacking in originality and diversity (even moreso than already) thanks largely to kids being introduced into music as a binary instruction set - hit the wrong button and you're ruined.

The Easter Island civilization collapsed because they chopped down all the trees on the island to make boats and shelters, not realizing that trees don't just grow out of stone. Musical talent doesn't either.

Re:Music authoring

[carlzum]

Originals. Lots and lots of awful songs written and performed by GH players. Free up some space on your HD, you don't want to miss out on that :P

Re:Music authoring

[Cruciform]

All songs have copyright by their very nature as creations that can be copied.
You can create a very liberal license (make them freely copyable, in fact) but they still have copyright.

Re:Music authoring

[Sparton]

From Wikipedia:

Custom songs will have a limit of 1,200 notes or 3 minutes, whichever comes first.

That's the most important limiting factor for creating songs in World Tour; your time length is less than the track length for the majority of songs in the game, and the note limit can make the song even shorter for more complex arrangements (especially since that note count is likely eaten up by background instruments as well).

At the end of the day, if you thought you were getting a robust music making tool in this game, you're were going to be disappointed anyways. Activision likes money, and as such they won't release something that could effectively be used to circumvent or directly compete with their DLC or releasing of new games.

And all of that dances around the fact that you won't be able to record voice in it, but I'm not sure if that's a bad thing. The amount of space required to keep the recording from being compressed into shit would probably be too much after a couple recordings.

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.

Re:Bah

[BathTub]

Citation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmjq-IWPnK4

That review of Wii Music...

[Toonol]

...Makes it sound really interesting, and confirms that it really lives in an entirely different genre than the other games mentioned. It sounds more like a musical playground than a competitive game. (You give yourself a score based on how well you think you sounded? That's great!).

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?

Guitar Hero vs Rock Band

[Enderandrew]

I've never seen Neversoft claim they were the first full band game. If they made the statement, then it was inane because everyone knows it isn't remotely true. They were however the first to do guitars and start the genre to begin with.

I will say having played Rock Band and Guitar Hero, I prefer Guitar Hero for a couple reasons. The guitar portion of Rock Band is far too easy. I sit there all day waiting for notes to play, where as drums provides a reasonable challenge. There is a great disparity there. Next, Rock Band added drums, but it didn't do much in creating gameplay around the instruments.

Guitar Hero: World Tour has developed a better guitar, better drums, and has better gameplay to boot.

Not to mention everyone I know with Rock Band has complained about cheap instruments breaking, especially the drums.

The one advantage Rock Band had (and might have with the next generation) was more DLC. Guitar Hero says they are going to step up here and offer more DLC. We'll see.

Re:Guitar Hero vs Rock Band

[Anonymous Coward]

It's this kind of posts that make me lose faith in the gaming community.

Harmonix developed the first 2 guitar hero games, and then they expanded upon it with Rock Band.

Activision has been horrible with their management of Guitar Hero, so horrible that they drove away the original developers and had to bring in their own. Activision's president also at one point managed to say "Yeah, Guitar Hero World Tour will be the FIRST game to allow you to play all 4 instruments in a band!" which was an outright lie,Rock Band had been out for at least 8 months.

Also, Activision is horrible for the music game market because they "lock up" exclusive artists, which in the long term is bad for the genre. It's kind of what happened when EA Sports locked in the NFL franchise - EVERY OTHER sports franchise slowly withered away. Obviously music is wide enough that this won't be as easy as locking up one brand, but having exclusivity on Metallica, Aerosmith, Jimi Hendrix and Guns N Roses is a big deal in a "rock" genre.

Another issue is taste - clearly Neversoft has none in regards to what a game that originally began as a "rock star simulator" means.

The original Guitar Hero was awesome because it made you feel like you were indeed playing the songs. I play guitar and I strongly believe that Harmonix "gets it" in regards to how to simulate that you're playing the instrument.

Neversoft is firmly locked in the "This is a GAME and our players want DIFFICULTY" camp, and I just hate that. I can assure you that playing Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and the Flames" is not as hard in the real guitar as in the GH3 game (tho it is incredibly hard).

Anyway, it really saddens me that Harmonix worked hard for the brand recognition of Guitar Hero, and then when they wanted to expand upon their vision they were unceremoniously removed from their own franchise, and now that they have been building on Rock Band for a year, Activision has followed them with a copycat version.

Also I hope the people who say "GO LEARNZ A REAL INSTRUMENTS LOLZ" die in a fire.

Re:Guitar Hero is a racket

[Sparton]

Now I know the games come with a bunch of songs, but only a handful are actual versions; the majority are covers.

Not anymore. All 86 tracks in Guitar Hero: World Tour are master recordings. All 84 tracks in Rock Band 2 are master recordings as well.

In the age of consoles w/ harddrives and the existence of myriad music downloading services it seems odd to buy an entire game just to get some new songs.

Two things wrong with that. Firstly the PS2, which is still largely popular, doesn't have a hard drive, and the other popular inexpensive console, the Wii, is a joke in terms of storage size. Secondly, with a new game coming out with a consistent set list (of varied tunes), that means that every player of the game who has played it enough will be on the same playing level in terms of experience with songs as any other player. If everyone just downloaded what they wanted, almost no-one would ever be on the same footing in a competition (friendly or otherwise), because they likely wouldn't have downloaded the song.

I realize newer versions allow songs to be downloaded, but I don't believe this is very prevalent.

Baldfaced lies. Every PS3/360 owner I know that has this game for that console also downloads tracks, and I'm a Wii owner who's waiting for this game, and I can't wait to download some new tracks as they arrive. Obviously I won't be able to store much, and it'll take over a third of my Wii's memory to actually be able to play the songs, but I can handle that for a few dozen songs.

If I were Activision I would make a free downloadable version of the game built around downloadable content. An iTunesesque version, if you will. They could also release a SDK* (Song Dev Kit) so artists could sell their tracks via the service (or give them away if the artist is NiN-like). I believe this scheme would create a large song library, making users happy, whilst enable Activision to sit on their asses and light their stogies with $100 dollar bills.

In addition to the player experience issue I stated above, there are still a lot of people in the West who are resistant to "being nickel and dimed" for their entire gaming experience. Also, when the player decides all of the tracks he's going to have, you're a lot less likely to choose songs you don't already like or have heard a lot of good about. This is bad, because it reduces exposure of the player to new songs. One of the greatest things about Guitar Hero (and Rock Band) is that you get exposed to new artists, giving the player a richer experience and the opportunity to discover new favourites.

For some reason when i hear words metallica

[unity100]

internet, download all at the same time, the word metallica gives me a lot of irritation and annoyance.