There’s a lot of fun speculation going around lately about a potential shared future for the Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises. Bill at Dubious Quality kicked off this latest round by linking together a number of comments from higher-ups at the big players in the music game genre, like MTV Games’ Paul DeGooyer mentioning that the Guitar Hero-v.-Rock Band “format war” isn’t good for consumers, and Activision’s Bobby Kotick saying he regrets not buying Harmonix.
Bill’s conclusion is that either:
1. Activision wants to be the distributor for Rock Band games when the EA agreement expires, or
2. Activision wants to buy Harmonix from Viacom/MTV Games.
Personally I find the first option to be the worst of all worlds; what does Activision gain from distributing a competing product to their own Guitar Hero? Seems like it’s all loss, no win for them. The second option, on the other hand, seems a lot more plausible to me. Not likely, mind you — just plausible.
Tommy at RockBandAide, meanwhile, proposes a different theory to link all these things together:
Is it possible that in the future, Rock Band DLC could be cross-platform compatible? To take it a step further, could both franchises create exclusive, yet cross-compatible content? … If you could buy Guitar Hero games (which had exclusive content to the franchise) and export them to Rock Band, and vice versa, it’s a win-win for all parties involved.
This one has the benefit of being a bit more plausible in that it doesn’t cause the destruction of one of the two big franchises. But it still leads to the question of why Activision slashed its Guitar Hero development, and why Bobby Kotick talked up Harmonix.
We’ve also got similar theories from Kotaku and The Escapist. So here’s the question I have for you today. It’s a two-parter. Well, two and a half. First, do you buy any of these theories — or do you have one of your own? And second, do you think this kind of consolidation would be good for music games?
Let’s figure this out!
Making songs cross compatible across different platforms will never happen. If I could play Guitar Hero songs on my Rock Band, I would never put the Guitar Hero disc in ever again. Songs need to be exclusive to either one game or the other, or why have 2 different games? Its like Ipod and Zune. I can transport my music into my Ipod, why do I need a Zune? But say Metallica was only available for the Zune, then you better believe I’d be using a Zune as well as my Ipod.
I know people that dont like the Rock Band platform, and some people dont like Guitar Hero. I think that all music DLC should come from one source regardless of the platform. In a perfect world we would already have this option. Heres to crossing some fingers in hopes of this happening someday.
I think cross compatibility would be a good thing for all consumers save for one problem. The guys at GH can’t chart a song for shit.
The ONLY way to move either franchise forward it to offer subscription based unlimited content. MMORPG games WORK.. people WILL pay every month. The ability to choose your own setlist.. or have a never ending supply of songs is what the next step has to be.
These games have grabbed a dying business model and just like the regular music industry, they must embrace the future or see their billion dollar franchises fail.
Hopefully they will also be present on ONLIVE as well