Tread warily, gamers, for the Prince of Darkness (no, not Ozzy Osbourne) is now using video games and their publishers as conduits to capture and corrupt your soul, ensuring your one-way ticket to Hell.
At least, that’s what an author in the Philadelphia family paper The Bulletin says.
Activision boss Bobby Kotick said during his DICE keynote last night that he regrets not purchasing Harmonix.
“When we were buying Guitar Hero and buying RedOctane, the makers of Guitar Hero, we knew about Harmonix,” he said. “We had always known them as sort of a somewhat failed developer of music games.”
“They always had really good ideas, but nothing that was really commercially viable until Guitar Hero and at first we thought, ‘OK, it’s a good piece of software, but if we gave it to Neversoft, they’re going to knock the ball out of the park with this.”
And Neversoft did achieve great success with Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, because it was the first game ever to rake in over $1 billion.
However, Kotick did say that had Activision purchased Harmonix itself, Guitar Hero’s landscape would have been completely different from what it is today.
Meanwhile, Harmonix is working steadily on Green Day: Rock Band and another title which may or may not be Rock Band 3.
Activision, relatedly, has already announced that a new Guitar Hero game will be out before the end of the year.
Thanks for the heads up, G4!
Well, it wasn’t just Neversoft and Radical that felt Activision’s layoff tremors–Luxoflux and Underground Development (companies involved with the making of Guitar Hero: Van Halen and BMX XXX) have had their doors closed completely.
But not only were those two companies closed, RedOctane (whom you might know as the company responsible for Guitar Hero peripherals) have had 30 to 40 employees let go and the remaining employees are now answering directly to Activision.
All this may have something to do with Guitar Hero CEO Dan Rosensweig’s quitting a few weeks back.
Reportedly, Neversoft may be reducing its staff with the release of Guitar Hero 6 this year.
After releasing 25 Guitar Hero SKUs last year, Activision have announced that they are going to cut back the number of releases in 2010. Mind you, 25 items seems like a lot, but that’s counting each system a title was released for individually.
Scaling things back, Activision hopes to have ten or less Guitar Hero titles releases this year, maybe even limiting the titles to a single console.
One of the surefire titles to be released, however, is a Guitar Hero game application for the iPhone.
Activision has just announced in a press release that Xbox 360 Avatars will be usable as playable characters in Guitar Hero 5. If you don’t think this is the coolest thing ever, shame on you.
You can see the avatars in action in the video below, courtesy of Blur!
The full press release is after the cut.
I remember quite vividly when Guitar Hero first burst onto the scenes here in the UK. I’d never seen it before, and it was launching here sometime after it had already become hugely popular in the US – so I’d heard all about it on gaming message boards, with the US hardcore raving about the new, revolutionary rhythm game.
At first I found it fiendishly difficult, but after some time I’d worked my way up to hard and then even expert – and I was having amazing fun. I was in love from there, and I’ve been with the rhythm genre for many years since.
In recent years my allegiance has switched to EA, MTV and Harmonix’s Rock Band franchise – but perhaps a collection of the tracks I love most from the first three Guitar Hero titles is enough to draw me back?
According to Activision CEO Mike Griffith at the company’s pre-E3 conference yesterday, Guitar Hero has made the company over $1 billion in revenue.
He went on to say that the install base has surpassed over 15 million and that the company is looking to increase those numbers even more in the future. Guitar Hero 5 apparently has more than 20 top 10 hits in its tracklist.
Looks like this is one franchise that isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Tony Hawk Ride was announced a while ago and will be coming out with a brand new peripheral, in order to allow players to really immerse themselves in the skating gameplay. But in this age of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, do we really need more peripherals?
Guitar Hero 5 even allows 4 player multiplayer with any chosen instrument. That means you can play head-to-head with 4 drum kits! Does anybody want to buy 4 drum kits?
In the older days of gaming, a peripheral could sometimes be the proverbial touch of death for a game. Sure, it might not apply for Duck Hunt on the NES, but consider all the crap peripherals Nintendo came out with during the NES era: The Power Pad, the Miracle Piano, the Super Scope, R.O.B., and who could forget; The Power Glove… Then again, Nintendo did survive said onslaught of mediocrity.
Yet peripherals seem to lead to massive success these days. Wii Fit, Balance Board included, has sold over 17 million copies worldwide, and Guitar Hero and Rock Band are still massive audience pleasers. So I ask you:
- Do we need more game peripherals?
- Are developers too quick to jump on the peripheral bandwagon that Guitar Hero kicked off?
- What kind of game peripheral would you like to see in the near future?
- What kind of game peripheral do you NOT want to see in the near future?
Activision has recently unveiled they are developing some more music games. The Guitar Hero franchise is getting a new installment with Guitar Hero 5, Rock Band gets simplified with Band Hero and there’s some official word on DJ Hero.
Activision promises that all three games are due this autumn and together they “will transform the way consumers enjoy and engage with music by offering the largest variety of music genres, innovative technologies and new social entertainment experiences”.
But that’s not all, consumers! As if we don’t need even more Guitar Hero games, Activision has also confirmed another band centric game; Guitar Hero: Van Halen. As well as Van Halen tracks, the game will also feature music from bands like Queen, Blink-182, The Offspring and Queens of the Stone Age.
A leaked Achivement list confirmed the tracks “Little Guitars”, “Cathedral”, “Spanish Fly”, “Eruption” and, obviously, “Jump” for the game. I just wish this game would come with a synthesizer peripheral for “Jump”.
Full official word from Activision after the break, as well as a first look on the DJ Hero controller
Highlights this week include the Watchmen game, the Prince of Persia Epilogue DLC, and the Burnout Paradise Toy Cars pack. alongside your usual dose of Rock Band and Guitar Hero music packs and many other things besides.
Main Content:
- Watchmen: The End is Nigh (Game) [£12.99]
- Watchmen: The End is Nigh (Demo) [Free]
- Wanted: Weapons of Fate (Demo) [Free]
- WWE Wrestlemain: Legends of Wrestling (Demo) [Free]
- No Gravity: The Plague of Mind (PSP Game) [£8.99]
- Prince of Persia: Epilogue (DLC) [£7.99]
- Burnout Paradise Toy Cars (DLC) [From £1.59 seperately to £7.99]
- Street Fighter IV Femme Fatale Pack (DLC) [£3.19]
- Lumines Supernova Classics Pack (DLC) [£3.19]
- Skate 2 Throwback Pack (DLC) [Free]
- Bruce Pack & Carmen Pack for High Velocity Bowling (DLC) [£0.79 each]
- Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm – Storm Pack II (DLC) [Free]
- Metal Gear Online – Scene Trailer (Video) [Free]
- F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin – Launch Trailer (Video) [Free]
- Crash Commando – Airbourne Assult Wallpaper (Wallpaper) [Free]
- Crash Commando – Maps Theme (Theme) [Free]
- LocoRoco 2 – Color Theme (Theme) [Free]
The Gaming Vault has been tracking the progress of this game for a while now, and Harmonix, MTV Games and Apple Corps have finally announced the details for their Beatles-based rythm game.
The game’s official title is The Beatles: Rock Band, and will release simultaneously on Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii on September 9 of this year.
Like Rock Band 1 and 2 before it, The Beatles: Rock Band will feature the same band play with guitar, drum and microphone controllers. But that’s not all:
“In addition, The Beatles: Rock Band will offer a limited number of new hardware offerings modeled after instruments used by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr throughout their career,” said a just released PR.
Instruments from previous versions of Rock Band will be compatible with the Beatles game, as well as “other current music-based videogame peripherals”, I.E. Guitar Hero: World Tour instruments.
The game will run for $60, $100 for standalone guitars, and $250 for a full bundle.
Feel free to call me a nitpick, but I seem to remember the creators saying the game wouldn’t have anything to do with the Rock Band franchise…
As well as writing and playing games, I’m also lucky enough to have a particular passion for music. My passion with gaming and writing collides in my journalism work, and my passion for music and gaming collides in a different, exciting way: I’m part of a video game music cover band called The Red Wings – named after the airship fleet in Final Fantasy IV, not the sports team.
We in TRW have been lucky enough to get some gear from the great guys over at MadCatz UK that relates to the Rock Band games. Despite all playing real musical instruments as the game music cover band, we very much enjoy playing with our fake plastic instruments too. Mad Catz have given us a look at their new instruments for the game, and this is the first of several articles where I’ll give you the collective band thoughts on them.
I’m about to bust a myth here: Bass isn’t a boring instrument. It’s a common misconception of music fans that bass as an instrument is secondary to guitar and – I quote somebody I know here – played by people who ‘just aren’t good enough to play full-blown guitar.’
According to a recent AP report, the royalties that musicians receive from digital downloads of their songs in games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero are now exceeding the revenue they earn from album sales.
Mind you, that shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise, considering the mainstream music industry has been falling deeper and deeper into obscurity every year.
Presumably, ageing rock band Aerosmith made more money from the profit royalties of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith than they did from their last two albums combined, whilst The Red Hot Chilli Peppers have seen a sharp increase in numbers since entering the rhythm action business.
If you’re a resident of the US, you’ll be well aware of the tradition known as Black Friday, where stores run sales all across the country, and the consumers head out en-masse to take advantage. It looks like the Xbox Live Marketplace is joining in on the tradition this year as well.
If you live in the US and have an Xbox Live Gold Membership, you will be able to take advantage of reduced prices over the weekend on a healthy range of Xbox Live Marketplace content.
The sale covers a decent number of items, and includes reduced on for quality Xbox Live Arcade games like Rez HD, reduced prices on premium themes, and cheaper downloadable add-ons for games such as Crackdown, Rock Band, and Forza 2.
Unfortunate, only Xbox Live Gold Membership in the USA will be able to take advantage of these sale offers; the sale itself starts tomorrow, and will last throughout the whole weekend.
Hit the cut for the full list of reduced prices.
Guitar Hero changed the face of gaming the day it was released, when it turned peripherals from an industry niche concept into a requisite gaming experience, an impact which is still felt across the industry. But now, a new product threatens to take it’s place…
The Bike Hero.
Now, you don’t even need a guitar! Just use the road, and the peddles of your bike, to create the greatest audio-visual experience of your life!
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