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Viacom Closes MTV Games
eldavojohn writes "The Escapist is reporting that the MTV Games division of Viacom is being closed. After selling off Harmonix for an alleged equivalent of a single Red Lobster Gift Card, it turns out that Viacom's division known as MTV Games has little left on its plate. There's some bickering over missed performance-based payments, and MTV Games failed to secure a publishing deal for all the Rock Band games in Europe — which appeared to be the final nail in the coffin for them."
Did anybody really expect a publishing arm of The Shiny Things Network to be able to accomplish anything that requires effort? I mean they couldn't even get Harmonix' stuff published in Europe, and that was when it was actually popular (that bubble is over now).
This whole venture was little more then some suit saying "hey games are popular, lets get into that!" Once they did it, they realized that it's actually a tough, cutthroat industry.
Good riddence.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Makes me wonder what effect that will have to Xfire, specially after Viacom acquiring it from MTV Networks http://www.xfire.com/cms/xf_acquisition/
Saxtus
Fad schmad. People still play these games. The market is saturated. Everybody who was gonna buy a set of Rock Band instruments has already done so.
Fad schmad. People still play these games. The market is saturated. Everybody who was gonna buy a set of Rock Band instruments has already done so.
But they can still make a killing selling replacement drum set pedals.
This is no surprise. They did everything they could to run HMX into the ground before laying off 13% in December '09 to make their numbers look good. Since then it was a constant stream of people leaving.
They ought to just load them into containers and blow them out in some other country for a song, pun intended. Most of them are probably old controllers so they can be used to whet these potential markets' appetites for the new stuff. Another possibility is to work some deal to donate them and get some other company to buy them to do it (with the whole writeoff prepped already) in exchange for some cash.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Too bad they never developed a mortal kombat style game.
I likely would have bought %subj% just to watch snookies spine get ripped out.
We still play RB1 and RB2, but we never upgraded past the RB1 instruments (wired). Probably will get the newer instruments at some point and get RB3, but there isn't enough new gameplay to make it worth shelling out close to the price of a console for a single game. And that's the biggest problem with the music games.
Probably will get the newer instruments at some point and get RB3, but there isn't enough new gameplay to make it worth shelling out close to the price of a console for a single game.
Rock Band 3 there has amazing new gameplay. The keyboards alone are a great addition. The training is far more advanced, and with the right set up would very easily teach a person how to play a real instrument (which is not necessary if you just want to play a game). The Pro modes on all the instruments adds yet another level of difficulty. The ability to drop in and out of a song at any moment makes for a great party game. The ability to progress in the game even in no fail mode allows less skilled players to enjoy the full extent of the game (and no fail does not make it easier to earn stars or score, just allows you to play the whole song.) They removed the whole tour mode and integrated that better into the overall game, but they did add road challenges which include a new way to earn accolades and teaches you to focus on different aspects of playing.
Overall Rock Band 3 has been worth every penny spent, including the keyboard and midi pro adapter (so we can utilize our Roland TD-9 electronic drum kit which blows away any of the rock band equipment.)
The reason Music games aren't doing well isn't that they aren't a genre people are interested in, simply that releasing the same game every 3 months and adding minor crap can make even the biggest fan of the genre completely jaded. Over saturation of any genre especially one that specific will eventually result in a total lack of interest in new products.