Xbox 360 owners, charge up those MS Points. Microsoft has kicked off their music-game mega-sale, featuring downloadable singles and track packs at as little as half the normal price.

Here’s the whole rundown of what’s on sale for Guitar Hero, and here’s what’s being offered for Rock Band. And should you also wish to grab some tracks for the Lips series, you can see what’s available at the LIVEapalooza page.

Seriously, there are some crazy deals in there. And should you want to save even more — and if you can act fast — you can pick up 1600- or 4000-point cards through Amazon for $3.45 off the regular price. They’ll have to be physically shipped, but if you order today (or you already subscribe to Amazon Prime and get the free two-day shipping), you ought to be able to get your order before the sale expires on Monday the 12th.

Microsoft has just announced “LIVEapalooza,” a week-long sale of downloadable content for all the big music games in the Xbox Live Marketplace. From the press release:

From July 6 through July 12, start a dance party on Xbox LIVE where you, your Avatar and your friends from around the globe can rally for a limited time sale on top music game add-ons.  We’re discounting albums, track packs and songs for “Rock Band” (MTV Games), “Guitar Hero®” 5” and “Band Hero®” (Activision Publishing Inc.) and “Lips” (Microsoft Game Studios). From Green Day to The Rolling Stones, the stage is yours.

No specifics about what exactly is going to be discounted yet, but hopefully we’ll find out in advance so you can prepare yourselves to jump on the deals.

There’s a bunch of other XBL content going on sale as well, so hit the Read link for the full press release.

[Read, via RockBandAide]

Hi folks, just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know that I’m probably going to be scarce ’round these parts this entire week. Why? Because E3 is happening this week, that’s why! And on top of the regular madness that accompanies any big event like this, I’ll be covering the show for G4TV.com, which is likely to take up the bulk of the time I might have otherwise spent posting here.

Now, I expect I’ll be covering some of the music games for G4; if so, you’ll find previews posted at their E3 2010 previews page, and I’ll do my best to update here anytime anything relevant goes up there. And of course I’ll do my best to post anytime I see something on my own that you fine people will be interested in.

But your best bet in terms of coverage from me is to subscribe to the Plastic Axe Twitter feed. I’ll be a lot more likely to have time to punch up a quick Tweet (oh god I still hate that word so much) or post a quick picture than to have time to write up a full post.

In the meantime, please to enjoy this post I wrote many years ago about the E3 experience. Much of this still holds true, though alas — the Ziff party (and as far as I know, the Sony party) is no more.

Remember those two batches of hip hop and dance tracks that Harmonix apparently licensed awhile ago? Game Informer seems to think they know what that’s all about: A dance game using Microsoft’s motion-sensing Natal technology.

Dance Dance Revolution has enjoyed improbable success for well over a decade at this point, and recent refinements using motion-sensing technology (e.g., the Wii’s Just Dance) have added a further dimension to the format. An arm-flailing, pelvis-gyrating dance game certainly seems like a good fit for a full-body-sensing controller. But to have it come out of Harmonix? I’m not certain I buy it.

There’s precious little detail in the article, so we’ll have to consider this very much a rumor at this point. But who knows? We may learn more at E3.

Which is the week after next. Yikes!

[Read]

I have a soft spot in my heart for Peavey. My very first real bass was a Peavey, and to this day I still love the tone and action on that thing. Not flashy, no — not a marquee brand for instruments by any means, at least not at the time. But man did that thing do what I needed it to.

So when I learned this morning via Gamers Daily News that the company is apparently getting into the music-game, er, game, my initial reaction was a delighted surprise. Alas, right now the details of this particular deal appear to be slim to nonexistent. It would seem that Peavey is hooking up with a company called Zivix to distribute a music-creation game called JamParty (pictured), which looks pretty much like an expanded version of the Studio introduced in Guitar Hero World Tour.

But the real reason I’m guessing Peavey is involved is that the companies are jointly creating a controller called the HeroMaker. (Yes, really.) And it sounds like it’s basically the same deal as the PowerGig: a real guitar that can also double as a game controller, via “unique fingertip sensors.”

And that’s pretty much all the info I could find about the HeroMaker; not surprising since according to the GDN story it won’t be available until 2011. But in the process of hunting for info on Peavey’s site I discovered this: Continue reading →

Poor Konami. They pretty much created the music game as we know it today back in the ’90s, with GuitarFreaks and Drummania. And though both franchises were big hits in Japan, the company never brought them Stateside. I’ve never gotten a definitive answer as to why; one rumor claims that MTV held the U.S. patent for a drumming game thanks to its positively un-game-like playalong title Drumscape. Another theory says that Konami believed Western audiences, considered to be less hardcore than Japanese gamers, would be reluctant to fork over the cash for expensive peripherals.

Hindsight kinda sucks sometimes, doesn’t it? I picture some Konami exec getting up every morning, looking at his haggard face in the mirror, sighing softly, and beginning yet another day of marathon drinking. Especially since the company’s one attempt to jump into the market here in the U.S. was greeted with almost universal revulsion and almost comically low sales.

But it doesn’t sound like the company’s willing to give up just yet. In a recent financial report (PDF), the company says it plans over the next year to focus on “the DanceDanceRevolution series and other music games, which is a genre in which Konami has particular strength.”

Now, here’s the thing: As Siliconera points out, aside from DanceDanceRevolution Konami has only one other music game announced for the U.S.: Def Jam Rapstar. So the reference to “other music games” — plural — seems to indicate the introduction of a new title that’s neither dance- nor rap-focused. Could the company be diving back into the instrument-game pool? On the one hand, Rock Revolution did so poorly that it has to make them a bit gun-shy…but on the other, it may also push them to want to erase the stain on their music-game record.

Got a theory of your own?

[Read, via Siliconera]

You know Activision has a relatively new community-interface blog called One of Swords, right? And you know proprietor Dan Amrich hosts weekly podcasts, right? Well, if you check in on today’s podcast, you’ll hear a familiar voice: mine.

Dan was kind enough to have me as a guest on this week’s show, where we shot the sh– …er, breeze about the state of the music-game genre, the benefits or drawbacks of single-band games, the myth of oversaturation, and various other music game-y topics.

The podcast is about 90 minutes, and my segment starts around 35 minutes in or so. I had a lot of fun, and it was nice to know that, although Dan works for Activision, he’s really just a fan of music games overall, and doesn’t pull any punches when criticizing the Hero brand or praising the competition. And he didn’t even try to cut me off while I was gushing about playing Green Day: Rock Band!

You can check out the podcast streaming at OneOfSwords.com, or you can download it through iTunes or the Zune Marketplace.