You know, every so often I’m surprised by the mainstream media. Their default approach to videogame stories tends to be either breathless sensationalism or just comic cluelessness. So it’s nice to see an outlet like MSNBC approaching a game-related topic with seriousness and respect.
That’s the tone of their recent interview with Rock Band drummer (and YouTube phenom) Dezmond Castner, aka azuritereaction. Castner does a great job of explaining the music-game genre and his fascination with it. I particularly like this bit:
Q: You’re a real drummer. Why get into “Rock Band?”
A: The real reason I actually got into drumming in the first place is because, a long time ago, back in 2000, I got into rhythm games in general … And five or six years ago, there was this thing called “Drum Mania,” which is the same thing as “Rock Band,” and I played that in the arcade. That got me into real drumming.
But wait, aren’t music games supposed to be driving kids away from playing actual instruments?
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Remember that brain-bending, guitar-controlled platformer Fret Nice I mentioned a few months back? No? Well here, read this. Let me know when you’re done.
All set? So, amidst all the unexpected DLC announcements yesterday I plumb forgot to mention that it is now available on the PlayStation Network, as of yesterday. The price is a surprising (to me, anyway) $14.99, and I’d love to give you some hands-on impressions, but all my instruments are for 360, so I’d have to play with a regular controller…which would kind of defeat the purpose, don’t you think?
In lieu of that, check out this entertaining “interview” posted at the PlayStation blog. I’ve also posted more screens after the break for your enjoyment. Continue reading →
Dan Rosensweig, former CEO of Activision’s Guitar Hero division, has stepped down to become president and CEO of Chegg, a rental site for school textbooks, says GamesBeat. As hinted in the screen cap from CNBC above, Chegg is aiming to basically be a Netflix for textbooks: Students order books, use them, and then return them for free.
Asked by CNBC why he left Activision, he replied, “This is just one of those rare opportunities where you can be in an industry that helps American families and students…it’s an opportunity to build a great franchise.”
David Haddad, chief operating officer of the Guitar Hero business, will take over the division.
Looking at the position he’s taken and the growth of the company, I wouldn’t read too much into this move regarding Guitar Hero’s health; chances are Rosensweig just saw an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a growing company. And Dan Amrich over at Activision’s recently opened community-relations blog One of Swords has emphatically stated that Rosensweig was not fired. Of course, I know that won’t stop the conspiracy theories from flowing. Can you do me a favor and share the juicy ones in comments? I love the industry gossip.
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Well would you look at that: The announcement for next week’s Rock Band DLC has arrived over 12 hours early, and it’s a biggie: Tuesday will see the release of Megadeth’s seminal Rust in Peace album in its entirety. So now you’ll get to see if all your playing of the “Hangar 18″ cover in Guitar Hero II has sufficiently prepared you for the real thing.
| Megadeth | Holy Wars… The Punishment Due |   |
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| Megadeth | Hangar 18 | |
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| Megadeth | Take No Prisoners | |
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| Megadeth | Five Magics | |
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| Megadeth | Poison Was the Cure | |
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| Megadeth | Lucretia | |
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| Megadeth | Tornado of Souls | |
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| Megadeth | Dawn Patrol | |
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| Megadeth | Rust In Peace… Polaris | |
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No official word on price yet, but if I had to guess I’d say the tracks will likely go for $2 apiece, and oh, let’s say $14 for the whole album? That’s what I’m going with. EDIT: Bah, I was a buck off. It’s $14.99 on PS3, 1200 Microsoft Points on 360.
The tracks should hit at the usual time next week. And if you haven’t been exposed to this prime example of early-’90s metal, the album is embedded after the break.
And by the way, in case you didn’t see it on the Plastic Axe Twitter feed, Harmonix has made that Who medley official. It’ll be called “The Who Super Bowl S-mashup,” and it’ll appear Sunday after the game for two bucks. Still no word on what songs will actually make up the medley, but I think we can come up with some pretty solid guesses. Continue reading →
Aha. Remember when I mentioned that the dire accounts of plummeting music-game revenues were not the whole story? An article at LiveScience hints at one item that might give a clearer picture of the health of music games: peripheral revenue.
According to the piece, peripheral manufacturers raked in around $5 billion dollars in 2009, with at least one company — Mad Catz, who happens to make a pretty hefty number of Rock Band controllers — increasing revenue by over 25 percent from 2008.
Now, the article doesn’t separate out revenues from music-game peripherals from the overall numbers, so I can’t tell you exactly how big an impact these figures might have if you were to consider them as part of the music game market. But consider that music game revenues last year just broke $1 billion; so if even one tenth of those peripheral sales were music controllers, that would outpace 2008’s revenues of about $1.4 billion. And that’s not accounting for DLC.
The lesson here: Don’t be too quick to call music games down for the count.
Peripheral manufacturer Mad Catz has put two wooden Fender Stratocaster Rock Band controllers up for auction on eBay — both signed by legendary Who frontman Roger Daltrey.
The auctions are to benefit Teenage Cancer Trust, a nonprofit that “funds and develops specialist teenage cancer units within hospitals which enable young people to be treated together, by an expert team, in the best possible environment for their age group.” Daltrey is one of the organization’s official Patrons. Mad Catz is also pledging to contribute 15 percent of its sales of the controllers to the organization from now through the end of the auctions.
Both auctions start at $300, and as of this writing have no bids. I strongly suspect that will change before they end on February 10.
You can bid on the guitars and find more details here and here.
» Over 2200 songs — 18 games and counting 
This is so meta it hurts my head. Apparently a company is making a real, entry-level Stratocaster modeled after the Rock Band guitar controllers…which are, in turn, modeled after real Fender Strats.