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Rock Band 3 Officially Announced For Holiday 2010
An anonymous reader writes "Philippe Dauman, Viacom CEO and President, announced today that Harmonix is currently working on the next Rock Band game, Rock Band 3, due for release Holiday 2010. 'The company is pursuing the game in spite of an industry-weakening decline in the once-booming genre of peripheral-equipped music games. Although the franchise has generated over $1 billion to date, the category in general saw sales contract by as much as half throughout 2009. MTV Games parent Viacom also saw Rock Band declines drag on its balance sheet in its last fiscal quarter, and expressed a need to refocus away from pricey peripherals in favor of software. It also said that due to royalties it would need to be more "selective" about track listings, and that it needs more support from the music industry in that department.'"
Spring, summer, autumn, Christmas?
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I must have a different calendar. When is Holiday? Is that after or before Septemberary?
Been there, done that. They need to find a new shtick...
I didn't buy Rock Band 2 becuase I already had half the songs on it from buying Guitar Hero 4. Seriously, what's the point in them both having the same songs?
I have downloaded plenty of songs for Rock Band 1 though, probably about 50. If they put good songs in Rock Band 3 and Guitar Hero doesn't get out there first with the same songs, I will buy it. I much prefer the visuals in Rock Band anyway.
MORE COWBELL!!!
There is a war going on for your mind.
It's between the propth and hexth of Octember (inclusive). I thought everyone knew that?
And here was me complaining about them using seasons...
If the new Power Gig is as good as it appears to be (and can get enough good guitar songs) it will blow away Rock Band and Guitar Hero :)
So when is 'Holiday 2010' in the US? Does that refer to christmas? Or some time in summer?
Not exactly compatible peripherals among games, crappy and buggy implementations, absurd prices and bad playlists pretty much killed the genre. It's been downhill since after guitar hero 3/rock band 1.
After guitar hero 3, new releases seems to be using the same (and bad) engine. It epicly fail to process the buttons and frets on the PS2, and drops framerate noticeably all the time on the wii. They chose impossible-to-accomplish-on-those-platform graphics over gameplay.
All that and guitar hero aerosmith.
By the way, DJ Hero? WTF? And wtf is Band Hero? Is guitar hero with drums? Is another thing? How is it different from guitar hero 5?
It also said that due to royalties it would need to be more "selective" about track listings,...
This sounds like "let's include more stuff like "Visions" and "I'll get By" where the artist is happy we included them in our game, not like those big rock stars with their big egos and good music and wanting a decent royalty, a pox on them!"
Why would ANYONE charge to be in Rock Band? If you want a sure way to boost your sales, get yourself featured in Rock Band. Thousands of people discovering or re-discovering your music is a pretty fucking obvious way to scare up some sales. Hell, for any game where music is featured a band is only screwing themselves by putting up barriers for being selected. If I had a band, I would murder my way into getting put on a GTA music station. Even for big name stars, reminding hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people that you still rock isn't going to hurt. It is even more important if you are an older band whose original followers are in the process getting jammed into nursing homes. You should be fighting over the privilege to introduce yourself to the younger generations via Rock Band.
The music industry has its head jammed so firmly up their ass that is a minor miracle and a testament to monopoly power that they continue to exist each year.
Next thing you know there will be a Rock Band DJ Guitar Hero mashup super collection.
...the once-booming genre of peripheral-equipped music games. Although the franchise has generated over $1 billion to date, the category in general saw sales contract by as much as half throughout 2009
Maybe its because the same peripherals could be used from Rock Band with Rock Band 2? The upfront cost of the game initially is expensive but once you have the guitars, microphone, and drum set the cost is significantly cheaper to move to a new edition and that's where the sales start to contract. The same goes for the Guitar Hero series also.
Personally, I think the genre has entered its maturity when it comes to growth and needs some drastic change or needs to evolve into something different. One solution might be introducing new peripherals but they need more advanced peripherals because at this point you need to justify paying for another 15 pounds of plastic.
That's got to be the most disheartening game release article I've ever read. "Our parent company think we're hemorrhaging money and we can't afford to put cool songs in the game because record labels are dumb, but uhhhh, yeah, we're gonna go ahead and do another game." I mean, what's the WoW2 release gonna look like?
"We at Blizzard are proud to announce that World of Warcraft 2 will be in stores on.....ahhh fuck it. Who are we kidding? We're just ripping money off of fat, friendless losers and people with OCD. Blah, blah, blah, enhanced 3d vectors and more elf chicks for creepy douchebags to write fanfic over. Have you read our support forums? Seriously? We're supposed to feel good about creating this shit for these people? Whoopee, we're bumping up the level caps so more 12 year olds can live in front of a monitor drinking mountain dew for hours on end instead of going outside. Huzzah!
Dude, Is this all there is to life? I mean, fuck, man, I'm gonna turn 40 soon and this is all I do? Write bullshit copy for gamer rags. I was gonna do something with my life, I was gonna be something. Screw it man, I'm gonna go drink alone......
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded in February 1991, and has published such hits as Starcraft and Diablo.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
It is, of course, a product of that politically-correct shadow-war on Christmas, escalated to the next level, which is that of Incomprehensibility.
You know what music industry? They just launched the Rock Band Network, which means any band that wants to be in the game can be now. You just got major competition in this area, so if you want get pissy and refuse to license your tracks for the game, that's fine. There's over 1100 songs available as of right now, plus over 100 available on RBN and it just launched a week ago. Getting your song on the disc itself is guaranteed sales, as most everybody playing RB right now will likely pick up the next version as well. With downloads, people don't have to purchase your song to get other songs that they want along with it. In addition, Harmonix themselves will chart your song, whereas you have to chart it yourself if you're putting it up on RBN. So if you want to be stupid and not make free money, that's fine. Go die in a fire.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
And along that point, it's worth reminding people that the Rock Band Network just launched, making it even easier for those bands to get on there. The downside being that you'll have to rely on community rating to show up among the crowd of other bands on there - there were a 100 tracks released on launch of the network, with supposedly another 300 in the pipe. And while there's a glut of unknown indie bands on the network who are desperate for the publicity, there's also a number of... maybe you'd call them "third tier" bands, groups that have a strong following but don't get much radio airplay. I picked up tracks by Flogging Molly, Steve Vai, and KMFDM on launch day.
When they say that they're going to be more "selective" with the music they pick up, I'm guessing that's the direction they'll go in. It doesn't necessarily mean they'll be using worse bands or less good music - it more likely means that you'll be seeing less of Metallica in favor of more Mastodon, things along that line. And I wouldn't have a huge issue with that.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
...make it so I can import music I already own, so I don't have to buy the songs yet again.
So, what happened in 2009?
Rock Band 2 was released in 2008, and had some time to die down before 2009. Same for Guitar Hero World tour.
Harmonix released Beatles Rock Band. Were they expecting that to do as well as Rock Band 2? The only logic I can see to Beatles Rock Band is that maybe they are hoping that Beatles fans are like Star Trek fans; there are some compulsive enough to pay any price for anything branded with their favorite franchise. (Before you get angry, The Beatles could have made a great series of track packs, but you cannot expect one band to carry half the industry).
I own Guitar Hero 5. It's alright, but most reviews complained about a weak song list, and Guitar Hero Van Halen didn't exactly bring people to stores.
So, is it possible that the decline was due to a weak offering in 2009? These companies are shooting themselves in the foot by providing an even weaker offering in 2010.
How kind of them to release it when I'm on holiday in August. One question - how did they know?!
I never understood the popularity of Rock Band, Guitar Hero, or Dance Dance Revolution. To me, they are all just rehashes of Simon. The machine gives you a sequence of buttons to push and then you push the buttons in the same sequence that the machine tells you.
Is it any wonder that the booming economy is in $10 iPhone games when we have a recession where people don't want to spend loads of money on something that just might suck?!?
The song/peripheral games market is saturated and people that play these games with groups of people don't need more than what they already have.
The original idea itself counts for very little
Tell that to Roxor Games, whom Konami sued into the ground for making In the Groove. Konami managed to patent in the United States several methods essential to music games, and Activision's Guitar Hero products use the Guitar Freaks and DrumMania patents under license from Konami.
You see, they can't say Christmas because of militant Atheists, and they can't say Fall because of Australia and New Zealand. So they fall back to Holiday, which is the Tuesday before Black Friday and signals the last day a work of authorship can be published before the shopping season begins. In United States, the shopping season traditionally begins on Black Friday, the first Friday on or after November 23.
They need to let you plug your own guitar into the game as a controller. That's a game I'd play.
You might be interested in Guitar Rising.
By the way, DJ Hero? WTF?
Real-time playback of a mash-up, which is supposed to be a more accurate simultation of real DJing than Konami's Beatmania.
And wtf is Band Hero?
Guitar Hero 5 with a set list from more "pop" genres.
make it so I can import music I already own
What did you mean by this? If you own copyright in the composition and the recording, you can spend $1,000 for the XNA devkit (dual core PC + Windows OS + Xbox 360 + Creators Club + Live Gold) and put the songs on Rock Band Network. If you merely own a copy, it probably isn't split-track, so how would the game know what frequencies to play when you miss a note?
The holiday season (in general) means the time between Thanksgiving and New Years Day, inclusive
That's the same Holiday season I was referring to; my reckoning of Holiday for game releases is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It's just that Thanksgiving occurs a month and a half earlier in (say) Canada; is the "holiday season" considered twice as long there?
You mean with the PC I already own (includes Windows)
My PC is too old for XNA Game Studio. Other people might own a Mac, especially people who bought a Mac for GarageBand.
the XBOX I already play with a Gold Live account.
Rock Band Network authoring tools are not available for the Wii or PLAYSTATION 3 version of Rock Band.
Net cost for most people who already game
I'll grant for purposes of this discussion that more people who play Rock Band have a recent Windows PC than have a Mac, a Linux PC, or an older Windows PC. But what sales figures are you using to back up your claim that "most people who already" play Rock Band have the Xbox 360 version?
Considering the install base of the 360 versus the PS3 in America, and the dull support for DLC songs on the Wii, are you seriously saying that only 1/3 of the Rock Band fanbase plays it on the 360? I would imagine it's a much greater proportion than that, and that they served the most of their fans by getting it to the 360 first.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Google "freedom from religion" brought up this