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Viacom To Sell Rock Band Creator Harmonix
UgLyPuNk tips news that Harmonix, the game developer behind Rock Band and the early Guitar Hero games, will be sold by parent company Viacom, signaling the media conglomerate's exit from the console game market. Quoting Wired:
"The news is yet another ominous sign for the music-game business, which exploded seemingly overnight in 2005 with the release of Guitar Hero. ...sales have been in free fall since the dizzying heights of 2008, with Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock moving only 86,000 copies in its first week... Thus far in calendar year 2010, the balance sheet seems to show that Harmonix has been a $300 million liability for Viacom. And it doesn’t look like Viacom believes in the long-term future of music games. With any luck, the company will find a buyer that can help Harmonix grow, but it’s hard to imagine a better partner in the music biz than MTV."
I blame them and MTV for killing America.
I would imagine some partner in the music business would be better than partnering with MTV.
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I'd buy these games if I didn't have to spend hundreds to get the peripherals for them. Yeah, I've played using a PS3 controller, but this is really their downfall. Each new version of Rock Band and Guitar Hero gets more outrageous. I've been a drummer, I wasn't so hot at it, but I do know that any sort of skills you develop with these games are pointless for playing actual music and it doesn't matter how advanced these games get. They are just money pits.
What happened is that they exploited that genre to exhaustion.
Probably. I still think that 22 Guitar Hero titles (not counting DJ Heros) over 5 years is clear exploitation. Rock Band did better but still has 3 main titles, a couple band-centric standalones, and a handful of spin-offs/ports.
All told, that's, what, some 30-32 music games from just two fucking companies over 5 years?
Rock Band is doing fine, it's Guitar Hero that's doing so poorly. And it's doing so poorly because they followed the Activision strategy of pushing out a new game every six months, which is actually the exact same game that was previously released. Between 2006 and 2010, twenty-two (22) Guitar Hero-branded games were released - about one every three months. Granted, this was across multiple platforms. If we look at console only, there were only eleven unique Guitar-Hero branded games during this time frame. Still way too many. The simple fact is that they flooded the market, and killed off their own brand.
There was no real need for a Rock Band 2 or 3 IMO.
If it were on PC the functionality in the new games could have just been patched in.
Rock Band had it right, 2-3 new songs per week. That's how you keep people's interest in a game.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
After all, there are only so many ways you can reinvent Simon.
If you ask me what Simon is, that's just an example of how young you are. Or how old I am!
There was no real need for a Rock Band 2 or 3 IMO.
Yes there was. Changing some of the gameplay fundamentals required breaking compatability with previous scoring methods. That would invalidate all of the existing high scores, and gamers wouldn't be too happy if suddenly the company came along and said "sorry, but your high scores are gone".
Let me give you one example of what I'm talking about. RB3 has this nice new way of tracking scores during a song. At the end of the song, not only are they able to score you as a band and record a new band high score, but each player is able to be scored on their individual performance. The are given the score that they would have received had they given that exact same performance in a solo game, and even though they just played as a band, that solo score can actually count as their own personal solo high score for that instrument. This could not have been done in rock band 1 or 2 because of the unison bonus, which earns you more overdrive than you could possibly have earned in a solo game. So in order to make this new scoring system work, they had to remove the unison bonus. That would instantly break every existing high score had it been done in the same game.
Rock Band 2, maybe. However, there were tweaks to the core engine and scoring that would invalidate the leaderboard scores, and fairly major interface changes that were much welcomed in RB2. RB3 though, I don't see how you can argue that a new game wasn't necessary. The interface is literally completely different in every conceivable way, an entirely new instrument was added (keyboards) and an entirely new mode based around getting as close to a real instrument as possible within the game was created. That stuff could simply not have been done with a simple patch.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
They didn't remove the unison bonus, they expanded it to apply in solo play as well.
FC Closer
This may lead to Tribe getting back together!
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
What does MTV have to do with music? Hell the M in MTV doesn't even stand for music anymore.
And Rock Band is just better than Guitar Hero.
Of course we all know the real reason you have to at least release a new game a year is that nobody wants to buy a four year old game, even if the game is receiving relevant, up to date content. For that reason I wouldn't begrudge one new iteration per year, so long as they make it simple to bring all the previous content along. One of the things I thought sounded nice about the latest GH games is that you could "import" songs from previous versions. Since I've never had experience with either game before GH6, I naively thought that meant I could just buy one of the old games cheap, copy the songs to the HDD and play them in the new GH, but no, apparently a tiny number of songs have so far been converted to work, you need a unique code from the old game to tie it to your account, so buying it used is out, and god only knows how this works when more than one person plays, do we all need our own copy of the old content to get our own unique IDs, is it tied to one console or can we take it with us, etc. Not to mention you have to pay a re-licensing fee - what?? That's right, you already have a license, but now you need a re-license. It's a complete joke, they appear to have made this as complicated as possible to make it incredibly difficult to import music, so they can advertise it as a feature, safe in the knowledge a lot of people won't use it but will instead buy their ridiculously over priced DLC. Apparently Rock Band does this a little more sensibly, although you still have to pay to re-license your existing music.
Everything here could have been patched in.
Scoring? Do exactly what Diablo II does. Every time a new patch comes out, the rules are essentially changed. New balance, new items, new monsters - it's a different game. So the old leaderboard is frozen for all time, viewable to all, and a new one is started.
Occasional restarts of the leaderboards (yearly is good IMO) will keep the competition fresh and keep the bands with 15 billion fans from remaining #1 forever.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
The leaderboard issue, maybe. The problem is that we don't know how tied to the internal Xbox Live mechanisms this is. Would MS allow them to "freeze" the old leaderboards and keep a copy of them around to be viewed? If the only alternative is wiping them, people would freak.
As for the other stuff, uh, no. No, it cannot just be done in a patch. First of all, it would have to be a free forced upgrade. Adding new engine support for the keyboards, plus the insane amount of R&D that went into developing the pro guitar mode? That is not going to be free. If it's a paid patch, then it's technically a DLC addon, and that means it's optional. Now you have new DLC which supports the new features and doesn't work with the old "non-patched" version of the game, but it's still all the same game in the DLC marketplace? That is just insanely confusing. No, a new disc release is the only sensible way to handle that.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
They are just schills for the RIAA anyway. Any destruction of anything related to the RIAA gets my stamp of approval.
I agree with your point the way you wrote it, but that justifies at most 1 new game. Everything in RB3 should have been in 2 IMO. =/
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Oh yes, as I said in my original post, RB2 you could argue that point. But RB3 is absolutely justified being a new disc release.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
Did the parent try calibrating the system? There is a known problem of lag varying from setup to setup, as all tv's, sound systems, and cables are not the same....
It helps a lot, really
Those who live by the sword, get shot by those who live by the gun...
They didn't remove the unison bonus, they expanded it to apply in solo play as well.
Really? I must be missing something. I haven't played the game extensively yet, but I have played about 5 or 6 solo songs, and maybe 15 or so song with 2 players and I don't remember ever seeing a unison bonus.