Edmonton-based Play Me Games has taken stock of around 50 units of Rock Band from a broker in the states and is presently selling the game for a whopping $500. While such a price would frighten off most consumers, demand for Rock Band is so high that Play Me Games saw more than half of its supply flying from the store by yesterday afternoon.
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.
i'm from calgary, about 3 hours south, and have been to that store and have even saw the manager selling a copy of the game to a guy for $500 bucks about a week and a half ago. that store is the biggest rip-off you could imagine. 89.99 for a wireless controller for either system. ds games for 59.99, 360 and ps3 games for 89.99 for the regular copies. i never understood how they stayed in business. people should just freaking relax and wait for the actual release from somewhat reputable stores.
Ya im from Edmonton and have known not to buy anything from them for a long time. I am not surprised at all that they are selling them for 500 or that they were trying to sell them for 800. I agree with chester completely on wondering how they stay in business. I guess there are enough suckers out there to keep them in business. I like to go in there ever once in a while and see the outrageous prices that they have for everything. The guy in there always asks me if i want a deal on some stuff and I ask him if he'll sell for x amount(normal price) and he says no. So i tell him im going to buy it for that price at the HMV on the other side of the mall and walk out. Usually laughing!!!