I think there is a hardcore niche audience that would be interested, the problem is reconciling hardcore niche audience with game that requires the mass production of various plastic instruments. I don't see how those two things potentially go together.
Harmonix needs to seriously shake up the music delivery system with something like a streaming music partnership with Spotify or going 100% F2P. I just don't see it taking off with just prettier graphics and new plastic especially in a world where even iTunes mp3 sales are down: thank Pandora and Spotify for turning music into a service.
Glorified single-band DLC packs, sure, but stuff like The Beatles: Rock Band is such a great way to introduce people to a band and to make them appreciate it in a way they wouldn't have otherwise.If there's ONE THING Rock Band never needs again is a game dedicated to one band only. That's what ruined this shit to begin with, too much market clutter.
If there's ONE THING Rock Band never needs again is a game dedicated to one band only. That's what ruined this shit to begin with, too much market clutter.
If there's ONE THING Rock Band never needs again is a game dedicated to one band only. That's what ruined this shit to begin with, too much market clutter.
Man, my rock band phase was on 360 and have so much dlc tied to it. I couldn't justify buying it on any other system so I'll probably not play this one now that I'm done with Xbox.
This sounds good, but I'm betting it's going to be a downloadable 'update' of sorts that just takes RB3 and make it RB3.5, make it work on PS4/Xbone, throw in some new songs (think 'RB Blitz' style soundtrack) and support it with semi-regular DLC updates while charging an upgrade fee to relicense your DLC on the new console. Or something.
This won't be a $60 retail release though.
I didn't have a problem with them. GH: Aerosmith, GH: Metallica, Beatles, and Green Day were all well done.
The one that shouldn't have happened was GH Van Halen. Holy shit they sent that one out to die and put in the minimum effort. Ignored a band member entirely and let Wolfgang choose his favorite Rock Band DLC to put in as guest songs.
edit: for people that don't remember, they literally gave Van Halen away for free if you bought the Guitar Hero that came out that year. Surprise surprise, it sold like butts when it had it's real retail release, and they barely even advertised it or acknowledge it existed.
And for a consumer that was fantastic.
Buy GH, get Van Halen, which was a fully polished game with like 50 songs, for free?
Why the fuck not.
Harmonix crashed the genre with their greedy ass DLC system.
With GH, you got 150 songs for $50.
Rock band wanted, what $1.99 a song? $2.99 for some songs? WTF is that.
You got a deal if you payed $20 for a 20-song track pack!
And for a consumer that was fantastic.
Buy GH, get Van Halen, which was a fully polished game with like 50 songs, for free?
Why the fuck not.
Harmonix crashed the genre with their greedy ass DLC system.
With GH, you got 150 songs for $50.
Rock band wanted, what $1.99 a song? $2.99 for some songs? WTF is that.
You got a deal if you payed $20 for a 20-song track pack!
Pink Floyd: Rock Band
No other band has the imagery (Flying Pigs!), the themes, the library, even whole songs with full animations (Marching Hammers!) ready to get the deluxe treatment. We need the dark flip side to The Beatles: Rock Band.
They just put out an album, too. Believe.
This is just pure lunacy.
It was only Rock Band that let you export songs from the first game to keep playing in the second game, and so on onto the thrid game. And ditto with all the DLC.
Guitar Hero was all about stop playing that old shit and buy our new shit up until World Tour, and by then if you wanted to play a track from 1, 2, or 3, or Metallica, or Aerosmith, or Van Halen, or Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80's, well boot it up and enjoy the old mechanics and missing drum part, etc, etc.
Guitar Hero was on Activision's pump-it-out-and-use-it-up plan.
In the meanwhile we had Rockmisth which teaches to play real guitars, so, no more plastic please. If they focus on real electronic drums and karaoke then I'd definitely be interested in buying a new RB.
The consumers spoke, and GH destroyed RB in sales. Of course it helepd that GH had vastly superior instruments.
There is room in the marketplace for both air guitar party games and serious instructional tools.
What? Are you comparing the price per song on the disc of GH to RB DLC prices?Fact is, people prefer quantity. With GH, you were paying 30 cents a song, for $2 a song in RB. Why the fuck would you want to pay so much more?
I love Pink Floyd but I think people are overestimating how fun their music would be in Rock Band. It's pretty slow, even most of the guitar leads.
Look, Im not saying RB was garbage. The export to next game feature was cool, but lets not pretend that was available on every platform.
Fact is, people prefer quantity. With GH, you were paying 30 cents a song, for $2 a song in RB. Why the fuck would you want to pay so much more?
The consumers spoke, and GH destroyed RB in sales. Of course it helepd that GH had vastly superior instruments.
Yes, Harmonix tried to get in on the fun my flooding the market with Beatles, Green Day, AC/DC, County pack etc etc, but except for Beatles, they completely half-assed it.
Say what you want about the music in Van Halen or Aerosmith or Metalicca, but those were fully formed band experiences, not some RB style cash in.
Rocksmith is fun as much as Rockband was. Why spend a hundred for a plastic guitar when you can learn to play a real one?
Your memory is fuzzy, guitar hero songs actually cost more than rock band songs back in the guitar hero 2 and 3 era, and were certainly not 30 cents each lol. I think they eventually priced down to $2 each, the standard that Rock Band had set.
Superior instruments... is subjective.
Rock Band 3 sold twice as much as Guitar Hero 6. By the end consumers were sick of Guitar Hero as its userbase dwindled. Rock Band kept it's userbase strong through to the end.
Rocksmith is fun as much as Rockband was. Why spend a hundred for a plastic guitar when you can learn to play a real one?
Why ever have fun?
Also, you're assuming that people that learn other instruments and prefer those want to learn guitar as well.
I play real bass and I have no interest in learning full on guitar. Rock Band lets me have fun "feeling" the songs via gameplay.
I don't want to learn to play guitar, and I don't own a guitar as a result.
The price of an actual guitar is kind of steep if I only intend to use it as if its a plastic controller with big colored buttons.
Also big colored buttons do not bestow or require callouses in the same way I've heard guitar strings do.
You can play bass with Rocksmith and you can "feel" the songs with it too. It actually decreases or improves difficulty depending on how you're playing!
There's just not much more room from plastic guitar, you can have fun and learn an instrument with Rocksmith. You don't want to? Just notch the difficulty down and have fun.
You'll need a strong argument to convince people to spend an hefty sum for some plastic.
I don't want to learn to play guitar too and I bought a strat for 150€. I've been playing with Rocksmith for over a year and I still don't know even a single scale nor do I know what notes I'm playing but oh boy If I don't know how to rock R' U Mine from Artic Monkeys.
If there's ONE THING Rock Band never needs again is a game dedicated to one band only. That's what ruined this shit to begin with, too much market clutter.
I know you can play bass with Rocksmith, because I play Rocksmith, and didn't get it until they added bass.
You're literally pointing out right now that you just learned how to play someone else's songs on a real guitar instead of a fake one.