Ben Kuchera writes in Opposable Thumbs about the one major flaw of the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band and explains why the PS3 version is now the most attractive.
(via Ars Technica on October 30, 2007)
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.
personally i think the ps3 version is the version to get for those of us who own the orignal ps3's with the 4usb ports anyway. Wireless is also always the way to go. However if they go taking out online features and such and such then 360 version will be the way to go. At the end of the day it all depends on whether that lil usb issue as annoying as it is will deter you from buying it on your 360
yea more things to plug in is always a problem. I'm surprised that the power isn't thru the USB itself. I guess it would drain to much from the console itself, right? Plus won't they need to make one for the other model of the PS3? Couldn't they of tinkered around to make em wireless by hooking up the controller to them like they did with the Wii Guitar for GHIII?
Fail and 360 in the same sentence...
....
would be more pricey... I love being having no cables on my ps3 and would love to be wireless on pc or x360 (if i had one)
ppl stepping on controller cables comes to mind... made my earlier consoles fell a couple times :S
probably this is a bit off topic...
so...
on topic:
they should have make a usb receptor for the x360 ghIII version instead of this horrible outcome