VideoGamer.com headed over to a West End night club to ask Rob Kay, director of design at Rock Band developer Harmonix, why EU gamers have to fork out so much for one of 2008's most anticipated games. The Harmix dev also offered his views on the price furore, his message to unhappy PS3 owners and his thoughts on why Guitar Hero guitars won't work with his game.
TheGamer Writes "Harmonix has proven plenty of times it can make Rock Band work without instruments."
I mean, yeah, but was anyone saying otherwise? The fact is people liked the plastic instruments rather than pressing buttons on a controller. They enjoyed the simulated experience.
"Work"? No, but to be good? It's absolutely necessary. Not having the accessories is like playing a lightgun shooter with an analog stick sure it works, but one experience is completely unique and fun as hell, and other is torture trying to make do playing in a way it was never meant to be played
I think CHEAP plastic instruments is THE reason why the instrument-genre ‘died’.
People invested in buying the game AND the peripherals, so the guitar, the dj-set, the drum, whatever, and the experience was absolutely fantastic. Great fun, great music, etc.
But then the instruments would break. A button would stop working, or your hits wouldn’t register, and that kind of hardware failure would end in you not being able to play the game as intended, and thus you not getting the scores you deserve.
So, now you had a great game, but a broken instrument, and nobody is gonna buy a new plastic instrument every 3-6 months in order to keep playing the game.
A solution would have been to release better quality instruments (obviously), at a slightly higher price, so you could have kept the new games coming and the genre alive, but sadly, that didn’t happen.
Bust a Groove, Gitaroo Man and Parrapa the Rappa were such good games. Neither needed any extra peripherals
Player 2's long-form feature about kids and video games continues with a look at introducing toddlers to games for the first time.
Music rhythm games dominated the video game market in the mid-2000s. Unfortunately, the genre would fall from grace shortly after finding success.
More like faded away than failed. Failed implies it was new and didnt take off... that is not the case. Rhythm games were hugely popular but the lights dimmed and the show is over.
You would think the current situation would cause a resurgence but im actually seeing more people picking up real instruments and learning to play. My son is one who started out on GH and now he plays real guitar.
I lost interest when they stopped allowing you to use the controller to play with, just couldn't get into playing with the guitar.
Not the sole reason, but over saturation by Activision releasing 5 GH games in one year, charging full price for all of them while only Metallica and GH5 were worth it.
I dont think these games failed at all. People aren't going to keep buying games and peripherals over and over. All songs need to work on either rockband or guitar hero thru updates. Guitar hero live was actually good but rockband with all its songs and same equipment killed it.
I'm sure part of the reason they faded away, at least over the long term, was that you couldn't download them digitally.
So basically you just feel like ripping off European`s once more. "I Paid £90 for Star Fox Back In the Day".....Now we have Multi-Hardware there is no real excuse for such a high price tag, except of course to make a **** load of margin, They probably make £5-10 on the Rock Band Full Package in North America, and £20-30 pound in Europe profit on each one they sell. I`m not sh1tting you either, i worked in the Game Sector for years, luckily i can see some websites discounting Sale Price as the Margins will allow it.
VAT is 17.5% not 50 f*cking percent, I don't see how they can justify it being almost double the price for the same stuff
Um I believe the game is the same price the only difference being a change in the currency symbol. If you don't like the price, don't buy it.
You don't charge $170 USD and then charge £85 just to keep it at the same level. Again, if you have such a problem with it, buy the instruments from North American Retailers and pay the shipping as well. Maybe then you'll notice the real price difference.
sorry to say this but im not gonna get it. it's a shame that we have to pay more for less. if they do a full pack with everything and the same price as in the states, then i'll rob some old ladies for it :P
It is OVER the double cost. It costs around 100 euros in the states and here it will be at about 170 euros, but then you have to buy a separate guitar to play 4-some. Another 70 euros there. It's so rediculous.
240 euro vs 100 euros. Talk about being a$$ fvked