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Can the Guitar Games Market Be Resurrected?
donniebaseball23 writes: Thanks to a glut of titles, hardware and precious little innovation, the Guitar Hero and Rock Band craze all but died out by 2010. Now, however, strong rumors are swirling that one if not both franchises will be making a return on the new consoles. But will players care? And will the market once again support these games? Charles Huang, co-creator of Guitar Hero, weighed in, outlining some of the challenges. "First, the music genre attracts a more casual and female audience versus other genres. But the casual gamer has moved from console to mobile," he warned. "Second, the high price point of a big peripheral bundle might be challenging. Casual gamers have a lot of free-to-play options." That said, there could be room for a much smaller guitar games market now, analyst Michael Pachter noted: "It was a $2 billion market in 2008, so probably a $200 million market now. The games are old enough that they might be ready for a re-fresh, and I would imagine there is room for both to succeed if they don't oversaturate the way they did last time."
Make something new and better.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Or Zydeco Washboard Hero.
"No"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Learn to play real guitar ..
Sue your customers. Seems to always work for the music industry.
Same game, but plugs in to your electric guitar and teaches you to play while you play.
But with ACTUAL GUITAR! We have the technology! Rocksmith tries to go i in that direction, though I don't know how well it does.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
One of the biggest points of friction that they are going to have is that the games market is much more oriented towards digital delivery of goods than it was a half decade ago. It's not that the game industry can't be successful in selling physical add-ons. I think VR equipment will have a strong market once it matures and the prices become more approachable, but those are devices that will work for multiple games. I suspect selling a physical add-on to gamers, especially casual ones, that only works for one game might be harder now than it was the last time since people are so used to digital delivery and near instant consumption once a game purchase is made.
make a game outta hip hop instead AND NO GTA DOESN"T COUNT
I've been a drummer for 36 years and my family and I really like to play Guitar Hero, the kids mostly like singing and the drums with the wife playing "bass" and I play "guitar". It's fun for us, a way to have family time where we're all doing something together and support each other. However, having discovered Rocksmith 2014, this drummer is turning into a guitarist :) I still like the relative simplicity of Guitar Hero, but honestly, Rocksmith is more enjoyable on a personal level... Will we buy another incarnation of Guitar Hero? Yea, probably...
If you have a large enough market, the simplicity and repeatability of dedicated controllers with buttons chosen precisely for your game's design and so on is attractive.
If you don't, you run into the problem that low volume production of such gear isn't going to make the price point any more attractive, and it's fairly bulky and expensive for something you can only play a few games with.
Anyone know what the feasibility might be of, instead, of taking advantage of what is already available? For mics, the attempt to make voice control a fad left a fair number of consoles already equipped with one, cellphones and tablets all have them and support wired or wireless headsets, and USB mics of unexceptional quality cover everyone else for not much money. On the guitar side, probably-awful 'beginner' units are $60-80(probably less if you get one used after buyer's remorse claims the original victim), and essentially any electric guitar will support putting out a low-level signal into a 1/4inch jack. If a device already has a line in, a simple mechanical adapter will do, if not, cables that are a USB audio-in on one end, 1/4inch jack on the other are quite cheap. Once you had that, your game could presumably crunch the guitar's output and (depending on how much 'game' and how much 'learning tool' you want) do anything from treating a few large contact areas as 'buttons' to actually grading you on the degree to which your results match the correct output.
I doubt that, if the user needs to purchase everything, particularly new, you could beat the package cost of a mass-produced controller pack; but if you don't think that you have the volume for a suitable production run of instrument-controllers, it seems like an approach that has very low marginal cost and can work with more or less any instrument floating around in the wild, might be less risky and more approachable.
Pretty much is what you are looking for.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
5 years is plenty of time for a massive influx of new players who have never even heard of Guitar Hero. Of course this will succeed.
The controllers for guitar games are kind of lame.....
I'd like to see a real instrument as a controller, with wired frets etc; that way you could practice while playing the game, and actually learn something while gaming.
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
If you really want to sell lots of software, make the old peripherals work with the new game.
But .... Software Publishers are greedy bastards, who will deliberately make your last-gen peripherals useless.
Create a social network for those who never could learn to play the guitar, were your ex-customers of Guitar Hero and have them "social media" themselves... You could call it Guitar Loser.
1. Try to innovate the controller(s), to get them closer to real instruments, while preserving the fun factor and low cost.
2. Instead of trying to squeeze hundreds of dollars out of people with DLC songs, allow people to create and share songs for free, and release a few new official songs a month for free. That way you build goodwill, and your game is perceived as a good (and increasing) value over time.
Just my 2c.
I recall having a great time with these types of games with friends. They were kind of like karaoke without the singing part. The later editions with more options for setting difficultly per player (IIRC) made it even more fun since you could have some people who were more experienced being given more of a challenge while a newbie or less coordinated person could play at a lower difficulty level and still have fun.
The room full of crap that sat around was not fantastic, though. We live in a smaller house at one point, had the drum setup and a couple guitars. The drums were hard to store, got in the way and just sucked except when you were using them.
I'd probably be interested in picking up something like this if I could get a controller that would work with any arbitrary game, as I'm going to guess that there are going to be fun songs on both games. My kids always loved the guitars and they got some appreciation for non-kid music since the track selections were pretty decent. I'd also appreciate if they would bring the songs from earlier games forward, too.
In terms of being agnostic, it would be nice to bring your fake guitar to your friend's house and play whatever they had, irrespective of if it were Rock Band/Guitar Hero or Playstation/XBox. I'd bet overall they could move more copies rather than try and keep it siloed. I'd hope Activision would see at least part of that with their success with Skylanders -- you don't have skylanders for each platform, you can take them to your friend's house and play on any console.
My (admittedly limited) experience with these is that they became too reliant on DLC and died a death as a result.
The early ones were cool, you could take the game to a mate's place, along with the guitar(s) and jam away for some 2 player session on your favourite songs. The later ones started having more and more downloaded content, locked to the consoles / copy of the game.
This devalued the series, the content was no longer portable, the songs you played at home you could no longer play elsewhere, or, were faced with the prospect of having to take your whole console with you, or redownload them, neither of them attractive prospects, even if the downloads were to have been free it would have still more hassle than it was worth. If you're at a party, where lots of alcohol is involved, you don't want that, and that's where I saw these games (and others like SingStar) get the most play time.
It could have been saved maybe by allowing the songs to be transferred on USB, but then you'd still have all the hassle of account management, or no way to prevent people copying the songs endlessly which the studios obviously wouldn't allow. Re-releasing the games with all the DLC content already unlocked and available on disc after the initial sales could have helped, but again, would the studios allow it?
I forget the actual %'s and quote, and couldn't find it, but I remember one of the creators of the guitar game genre explaining that he and his musician friends wanted everyone to experience the fun of being a musician, but knew that becoming one takes a TON of effort.
So, the goal was to give a lot of the fun of being a real musician, but with a fraction of the effort.
Most people that like Rock Band or Guitar Hero don't want to learn how to be a real musician. They just want to have fun, and they do!
My point is, quit trying to point out that they should make it more realistic (real guitars, etc), because that defeats the whole point. If you already know how to play, go play! It will usually be much more fun than Rock Band.
But, if you don't know how to play and don't want to spend years honing your art, just go have fun.
Also, this: http://www.xkcd.com/359/
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
was seriously disappointed when opening the article
My kids have been learning guitar with Rocksmith. No formal lessons, no prior experience. And they're learning real songs along with technique and scales. This market already exists with Rocksmith style games and it's much better than those plastic fake guitars ever where. I never understood learning to play fake guitars.
You should check out Rockstar 2014. Its GH on steroids
It really seems like one game to me. It's already lasted longer than I expected.
-Dave
Guitar Hero has been entirely upstaged and replaced by Rocksmith, with which you get to play a real guitar and learn to play real music.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I know.. I do have a family and my daughter is special and she loves Guitar Hero/Rock Band and I have every one I can get my hands on from GameStop used bins and even have 3 Metallica Guitar Hero (Best Guitar Hero ever!). I will play with her, my son will play with her, and as a family we have a lot of fun. It is something special to enjoy a community game that has some great tunes behind it.
Enough with the advertising. I just want new guitars and new sounds. I personally prefer Rocksmith but all these games are just fun in the end. It is a family event rather than a family fight.
I look forward to it myself.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
I live in an apartment and a couple of years ago my neighbours bought Guitar Hero or something similar. They played with it for about two days. Then they stopped (and sold the hardware) when the building management gave them an ultimatum over the number of noise complaints they had received.
...laura
Well, at least it ruled for a while. My kids aren't home much, (went to Uni) I couldn't even give the peripherals away last year.
But, it got me to actually start learning to play a real guitar. What Rock band gave you, at times, was the feeling of "Rocking Out". The feeling of somehow being in the music, connected to it somehow, and that is all kinds of awesome.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Posting as AC because I don't want Activision lawyers coming out of the woordworks, even if I no longer live in the USA.
Quite honestly, I think the question given in the summary is bunk. Did guitar games go away? Yes, both Guitar Hero and Rock Band got the axe, for two different reasons.
In the case of Rock Band, it went by the wayside because Viacom bailed out of Harmonix, and they no longer had a company to bankroll them. Combine that with a poorly-timed release of Rock Band 3 when music/rhythm games in general were on the decline, and Harmonix's choice of plumbing a nonexistent niche through the "pro" controllers, and you have a recipe for a disaster. Personally, I loved the "pro" keyboard peripheral for Rock Band 3, and in fact I play it as much as I can to this day. The problem is that Harmonix were not willing to commit to providing note tracks for a significant portion of their existing song library for these pro controllers. Given that both Rock Band and Guitar Hero default to a lowest-common-denominator set list when it comes to DLC - if any one person in an online set doesn't have the song, you can't select it - it was perceived by most gamers as punishing players who were not interested in Pro Guitar or Pro Keys. After all, someone who is dead-set on playing Pro Guitar or Pro Keys isn't going to be buying DLC that's largely keys-centric or guitar-centric, respectively. In fact, even after the "pro" peripherals were released in Rock Band 3, Harmonix continued to publish an enormous volume of DLC that in many cases did not even have a note track for the keyboard peripheral. As a result, many people trying to use these new "pro" peripherals ended up being limited to the on-disc songs despite having sunk a considerable amount of money into DLC that favored their instrument, simply because nobody else had them. A song that has a killer keyboard part is unlikely to have a sufficiently challenging guitar part for any guitar players to buy it, and vice-versa.
In Activision's case - and I speak from experience, as I worked on most of the iterations of Guitar Hero for the Wii - it was simple market saturation. Any random gamer who liked the music/rhythm genre could have told Activision why they played Guitar Hero: Because it's fun. It wasn't because of specific bands, it was because it was damned fun. Nevertheless, given that most of Activision's executives likely hadn't picked up a game controller since the late 80's, they paid "market research" companies to tell them what gamers wanted. In reality, what these so-called "market researchers" told Activision was more or less what they wanted to hear: Secure licenses for specific bands, and make games that cater specifically to those bands.
Anyone who has played Guitar Hero could tell you that this was a bad idea, and in fact those of us who were Guitar Hero fans first, and Guitar Hero developers second, screamed at the top of our proverbial lungs that this was faulty reasoning. The average person who is playing Guitar Hero isn't playing it because he likes the bands, he's playing it because he likes music/rhythm games. Similarly, the person who is not playing Guitar Hero is doing so because he's just not interested in music/rhythm games. No amount of band-specific point releases will change that. Ultimately, the executives disagreed, and so Activision set about saturating the market with a new update every three months. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero: Van Halen, Guitar Hero: Metallica, and even Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, a game that literally only consisted of songs that were already in Guitar Hero 1 and 2, because god knows Activision had to try to wring more dollars out of people since they only owned the franchise as of Guitar Hero 3. By the time Guitar Hero 5 hit shelves, people had already become numb to Activision's unending flurry of titles, and they largely ignored it. Guitar Hero: "Phoenix", the code name for Guitar Hero 7, was well under development at Vicarious Visions when the final word came in in early February of 2011:
I spent probably over $200 on songs for Rock Band. If they make that for the X1 and I can use my dlc songs I'll buy it for sure. We still play it occasionally on the 360.
Here's my thoughts. The problem with the Guitar Hero-like games is that they have nowhere to go.
They have a somewhat clunky controller that can't be made much more complicated or much more responsive without having something that, in twitch complexity, might as well be playing the real thing. Plus today you could build a training tool that looks a lot like a game by combining a MIDI-guitar with a simplified display showing the next fingering position and which strings to pick for close to the same cost as a more complex controller. So moving up in complexity starts making it look too much like training and who wants that?
It's time to practice your guitar lessons, Maurice... Yawn after three weeks.
That is all.
As some people in the music licensing system wanted jukebox fees on each game.
I guess I'm the rare "ideal customer" for these types of games. 95% of the use of my Xbox 360 is at house parties we hold for our friends. As the night wears on, Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and DJ Hero get cranking. They are perfect for all ages and skill levels (particularly those who don't have a gaming system of their own and don't game regularly) to have a good time without having to work at it. Rocksmith has its place, but casual players don't want to study and practice just to have fun.
We have tried other "group" games like some of the Kinect games, but they're too much work for most of our guests (ages 25-60), and because we use a projector, it is tricky to stand in such a way as to not block part of the image.
The lack of fun music games is why I stick with my Xbox 360 and have not upgraded to an Xbox One. Perhaps someone could list some other fun party games that are available on the Xbox One.
1. I agree.
Rock Band 2 improved on Rock Band in many ways. Rock Band 3 it was nice that people could join at any time, but it felt like in many ways it was not as good as the first 2 to me. Then came the point were new DLC songs would not work in RB2 because of the format change.
3. To be fair Harmonix tried hard to use standard USB. At least on the PS2 and PS3. Certain other console companies did not want this. Activision was the one that didn't want to be compatible and did everything they legally could to stop compatibility. They blocked Harmonix from publishing a patch to make Rock Band compatible with the Guitar Hero 3 controller. In 2010 Bobby Kotick of Activision said that it was a mistake that they didn't talk to Harmonix after acquiring the Guitar Hero brand.
4. The joys of licensing. That being said, I thought I read about them making sure they were licensing all the tracks in RB2 so they would be exportable to newer versions of Rock Band. Obviously something went wrong. One of the things I liked about RB was that you could export most of the songs, unlike Guitar Hero.
5. I think the songs available had a lot to do with licensing again. You want a big name band's less known song, $0.99 a song. You want one of their top songs, $2.99 a song. They had to balance number of songs, with licensing costs and the selling price of the game. This was true of DLC as well. Even the devil (Apple) has to deal with this, and they have a much stronger bargaining position.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
You want to make it popular? Add a pure karaoke mode. The libraries a lot of good, high quality tracks compared to the shitty midi-based and sweat shop cover band crap you see in a lot of dedicated karaoke machines at that price point.
When you get together with a bunch of friends, everyone can sing (even badly) and have fun. Its really frustrating for non-gamers to even consider trying to screw around with one of those plastic guitars and the move to real guitars means you have to have musical talent as well. That's all fine and good for the hardcore crowd but it completely blasts out the casual market. A singing-only mode also means you can get away with selling people $20 microphones rather than $100 fake guitars.
Also, branching out to more than one core genre of music could probably attract a bit wider of an audience, especially if they add a karaoke mode. I know its probably hard to have a plastic guitar mean much in an Eminem song (or whoever's cool with the kids these days) but who cares? Might not be what you'd want to include as a base track but if people are willing to spend $2 on it as a DLC then just take the damned money.
(I know there's a few brands like SingStar that tried to do exactly what I'm suggesting but they came late to the game and never got the household recognition that GH and RB have, not to mention the cost of re-purchasing your damned library under another brand name. I also don't know what level of quality they supplied as I'm among the many that just never bothered.)
I knew a lot of people who had the controllers for those types of games over the years, which they'd either bought along with their consoles in bundles, or been given by relatives. But not once in my life did I ever see anyone actually play games like "Guitar Hero." Not once.
Yet I knew over a dozen people who had the controllers.
I wonder what percentage of those overpriced components sat gathering dust, never to be used after the novelty wore off in the first couple of weeks?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I never had much interest in the Guitar Hero franchise, because meh.... playing a fake plastic guitar with buttons similar to the old "Simon" game I had as a pre-teen seems rather pointless. People put all that effort into mastering it and it's a useless skill for anything else. Why bother?
Rocksmith did interest me, because it was all about actually learning songs using your favorite electric guitar. But only a few minutes into that one, I realized I wasn't getting into it either. I like what they tried to do with it, but like others here said -- why no standard guitar tablature? The whole scrolling neck thing works for Guitar Hero, but I found it pretty disorienting and non-intuitive for learning music on a real guitar. Maybe offer a toggle between views/modes at least?
Also, maybe it's just me ... but I feel like the era of the "guitar god" and stadium rock is pretty much behind us. These games still cling to that theme, that you're trying to play bigger and bigger live shows, seeking the applause of the fans, etc. etc. But do people even really relate to that anymore? I guess it's one mechanism to try to make the game rewarding -- but part of me feels too old for that nonsense. I want a game that makes practicing songs and new guitar techniques fun, but without making me pretend I'm 25 years younger and striving to make it big in the era of 80's hair metal.
The difference, IMO, is that obtaining a real guitar to play with one of these games is really not much more "out of reach" than getting the plastic toy version.
If you want to play a sport like football, you have to gather together a willing team of players. If you want to drive a real car on a racetrack, that involves some expense and a suitable car. Chuck rocks at pigs? Umm.... sure, if you have a handy pig pen to go visit at whatever hour of day or night you're ready to play that game, and you have an ample supply of rocks to throw, plus nobody who'll call the cops on you.
if there is any game that screams for VR support, guitar hero and rock band are it. Practice mode in a virtual basement, garage, or studio; move from small concert gig to large concert hall the better you are, and make it QUITE CHALLENGING to get to the stadium.
Mix in very realistic crowd simulation, and you get the chance to be the centerpiece in some:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRQnJyP77tY
I don't know about you but the 10-year-old kid in me is screaming for something like this.
why not resurrect that instead?
In the time it took to master mashing buttons and looking like an idiot for a given song, you probably could have learned to actually play it on a real guitar.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
When they started releasing band-specific titles I thought maybe they were on to something.
Then they released Green Day. Really? Forget them. I don't want Green Day, I want Dire Straits.
They also released Metallica. Really? No, I don't want Metallica, I want Joe Satriani.
There were other specific titles where they screwed up by focusing on bands that sold out or were overrated as well, but those were two of the most egregious examples.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I wish I had mod points. The one band games and packs were a horrible idea. The original Guitar Hero products introduced people to a lot of different bands from different times. My kids and their friends came to appreciate that. (Ok me too). This is actually one of my gripes with Rocksmith. I'd really like some (80s,90s,2000s... ) anthology pack rather than "3 greenday songs"
You may actually surprise yourself, winning friends and influencing people in the process!!!
It used to be try hards would think they had talent if they could play the opening to stairway to heaven. can't we just go back to that?
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
The problem with them was that there was not enough music that people recognised and actually wanted to play - so although a game might include "80 songs" I'd recognise about 10 of them and of the ones I didn't know I'd enjoy maybe another 20-30... leaving about half the songs that I just didn't enjoy playing.
I was VERY good at guitar hero/Rock Band for a while and I do miss those games but I can't these games making a comeback unless they actually get a decent amount of recognisable music in there - which probably means that music companies also need to stop being so bloody greedy too.