t's all doom and gloom for companies invested in music games right now.
Activision has announced plans to lay off the developers of Guitar Hero 6 once it's finished and drastically scale back on future installments in the series in 2010. Even Rock Band developer Harmonix has been told to partially return bonuses paid out by parent company Viacom.
This downturn in music game profits could just be the result of overzealous company estimates. But in your experience, has the appeal of this genre run its course? Do you and your friends still rock out with plastic instruments as much as you used to?
"Oh noes! Do you mean that aggressively over-saturating the market with a ton of extraneous and barely differentiated shit has somehow devalued the niche?! How could our cunning plan go so awry?!"
How many different GHs did Activisition release in the last year and change? Yeah. They're idiots, and they may have killed the golden goose because they're short-sighted and fundamentally sort of evil.
As for the appeal? I'm not as into playing RB2 on my own anymore, and my skills are rusty, but it is still a perfectly cromulent group activity when at a friend's house or a party. So the appeal is basically still there.
It has always been a party game for me, and since watching friends act silly never gets old I think that these games will always be useful for that.
Also, let the record state that Max is a music game power house.
I can't discount appeal, but one has to wonder about attrition. What happens when the countdown charts have been exhausted?
Yeah, I think I'm done buying music games (for a while, at least).
That being said, I still won't mind paying a little bit for a song I'm really going to enjoy.
I typically find that, in any music-game series, the first one I play always remains my favourite. I think the reason why is because it is the only one where I'm going to play it on Easy the first time, then Medium, then hard or better (given skill). But from the second game on, given that my skill remains, I'm only going to play through the game once, on that hard difficulty.
So, I agree. Unless there is something dramatically different, or if they can guarentee that I am going to enjoy every song (Beatles Rock Band, eh?), it isn't worth getting Guitar Hero X+1.
I just purchased two new guitar controllers in anticipation of a personal "Rock Band resurgence." My friends and I still love playing these games. As for the industry and this genre's future, one can only hope that publishers understand that their initial business models were flawed. I feel that EA has always viewed the market a bit more realistically than Activision (treating Rock Band more as a 'platform' than a 'series'), but everyone should realize that the high times don't last forever...
Long story short: publishers should be happy with the $$thousands$$ that online stores bring in rather than lament the $$millions$$ that aren't being spent on "bundle packages." Consumers have spoken with their wallets by buying scores of crappy plastic instruments; now developers need to keep up their end of the bargain.
I haven't really gotten into music games as much lately as I used to. Even before Guitar Hero! I was very much into Dance Dance Revolution and also dabbled in Beatmania IIDX, Guitar Freaks, Drum Mania, and a few other rhythm titles here and there. The appeal dwindled after several years and once it started hurting my knees too much to keep up.
I purchased several of the Guitar Hero titles and won a Rock Band 2 bundle through a Pepsi promotion. These games mostly take up space in my closet, though I do enjoy busting them out now and then for some quick, easy entertainment.
My friends and I still play Rock Band pretty regularly. I will rarely play by myself though for any period of time unless I'm getting my hands on a whole new game (rather than some new DLC).
Ed makes a huge point. Every gamer on the planet shelled out hundreds of dollars each on guitars, drums, and microphones when these games really hit their stride; obviously sales are going to plateau once everyone owns all the expensive plastic.
Now I think developers need to put more effort into expanding the library of songs, listening to the requests of their fans, making higher quality instruments that don't break, refining the user experience with features like the excellent party play feature in GH5, and keeping the players interested in the genre. A commitment to the fan-base that already exists is what's going to turn the rhythm game genre into a part of gaming, like the RPG or FPS is now.
I still play Rock Band all the time. Spent a couple of hours playing it yesterday & I'll be playing it more now that the Rock Band Network has launched and it will have new DLC almost daily.