Pics of pretty plastic

Shots released this week of the guitars for Rock Band: The Beatles and the turntable controller for DJ Hero. Purdy.

April fuel

I've been most neglectful of the blog so far this month. But I've been keeping up on my own research, playing GH: Metallica, GTA: Chinatown Wars, and Rhythm Heaven. I have to admit that GH:M is much better than I'd expected, and is even making me appreciate the band; 'tallica is more entertaining to play than to listen to, I think. Rhythm Heaven is silly beyond words.

Here are some links I've been not posting all week.

In further Metal news, I see Jack Black is "starring" in a new game called Brütal Legend from the many who brought us Secret of Monkey Island. And speaking of legends, two members of the Blue Oyster Cult contributed to an original song for Warhammer Online titled "Kiss My Axe (While I Drink My Beer)".

Meanwhile, Technology Review asks "Can Video Games Be The New MTV?" My personal answer to this question was, "Wait, what's MTV again?" In a similar vein, something called the World News Network (I think that's where Ron Burgundy ended up) has a piece on "Rock Band and The Future of the Music Industry". Nothing very new in it, but still good to see the meme spreading.

And finally, video games -- and shoot'em ups specifically -- improve your eyesight. It's science!

Rock Band cracks $1 beelleeon!

From Rolling Stone, of all places:

In a press release, the makers of Rock Band have revealed that after only 15 months of business, the franchise has surpassed $1 billion in North American retail sales alone. MTV Games and Harmonix also announced than more than 40 million individual tracks had been downloaded and purchased via the Rock Band platform.

And this is before the Beatles RB game drops. I believe the term "ka-ching!" is in order.

Get uppa, get on up

The Godfather, Mr Dynamite himself, James Brown – my personal number one all-time music hero – brings a dose to the Rock Band download store. The Get The Funk Out 01 track pack features "Sex Machine Pt 1", Earth, Wind & Fire's "Shining Star", and The Average White Band's "Pick up the Pieces". Although the JB track is way too obvious a choice, I can only hope there’ll be more to come. Hello MTV/Harmonix, I’d like "Talkin' Loud and Saying Nothin'", "I Got The Feeling" and "Hot Pants" please! And "Funky Drummer" so I can actually be the funky drummer! And "The Payback", so I can sing the line "I don’t know karate, but I know ca-ray-zey!" Hell, put up "Living in America" and we can get a dash of Stevie Ray Vaughn into the bargain. I think you get my point.

The past, the future, and the going-nowhere-fast

Too many interesting news bits already this week to stay on top of them all. Here are a few links.

Arstechnica ran a two-page feature on Tuesday titled "Roots of rhythm: a brief history of the music game genre," and a handy guide it is too. Nice quote from Masaya Matsuura, the Japanese musician, game designer and co-creator of the seminal PaRappa the Rapper:

It pleases me from the bottom of my heart to see the current success enjoyed by titles like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. The dream I envisaged 15 years ago, of music games gaining mass appeal, has to a degree become a reality... To me "Rhythm Action" can be viewed as nothing more than a gateway to the endless possibilities that music games hold. We truly hope that our fellow developers can help to unlock the potential of this blooming genre."

In "Game Music Goes Indie," Wired Blog GeekDad extrapolates from the emerging opportunities for independent gamemakers offered by XBox Live Arcade, Nintendo's WiiWare Channel, and the Playstation and iPhone App stores, to point out that this is also great news for musicians and sound designers. The author gives a shout-out to the self-described "unofficial game music arrangement community" OverClocked ReMix, which worked with games publisher Capcom to produce and then release as MP3s the "Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Official Soundtrack."

And yes, there is now a semi-official "stalemate" between Warner Music Group and MTV Games over licensing any part of its catalog to the Rock Band download store. Billboard calls it a stalemate anyway, taking issue with Wired's description of a "boycott" of WMG content by MTV Games. It's all rather convoluted and a bit petty. Ultimately Warner is setting itself up for a fall if it keeps up this kind of intransigence in the face of promising new revenue opportunities.

Guitar Heroics in the news this week

Gametrailers has a good Guitar Hero: Metallica interview/trailer with more gameplay than the usual quick-cut promos on YouTube. Full disclosure: I never had any real love for Metallica. I never detected a hint of a sense of humour in anything they wrote or how they played, which is a wee bit much for corporate metal. Then Lars' bullshit in the early Napster days sealed the deal. So the fact that there are some 45 Metallica tracks on this doesn't really stir my tea. Queen, Thin Lizzy, Slayer, Mastodon, and double-pedal drumming are quite another matter, plus the open drumming with no track to follow is pure win. (Completely hilarious upgrade of lyrics to "One" by MetalSucks.)

Kotaku tells me that EA wants some of this hot music game action. Might Activision, EA and Viacom/Harmonix turn up on music retailer market-share charts sometime soon? There's at least as much skepticism regarding the rock/rhythm genre's future as there is money being thrown at it. Is there actually a shark to be jumped here, or, as I'm inclined to think, will there be steady growth in the music game business overall even if certain high-profile efforts turn out to be epic fails?

And finally, a Wired headline writer rather labors the point with Why The Music Industry Hates Guitar Hero, but the article itself is a very sensible call for Warner Music, Bronfman and his lawyers to chill on the bitching about licensing fees and start cooperating with gamemakers. If it's really true that MTV/Harmonix is boycotting WMG and Warner/Chappell content from the Rock Band online store, the acts that "get it" ought to be kicking up dust. (GH: Bronfman edition pic from Digital Daily link.)

How safe is the rhythm method?

More on handheld gaming today. Since the DS and PSPs arrived at the office, I've been playing Elite Beat Agents on the former (screenshot right) and Parappa The Rapper on the latter. EBA is original and weird and totally Japanese and I'm into it. Parappa is a PS1 classic and excellent nostalgia, and as fun to play as it used to be. So the portables are getting my attention at the moment, and apparently I'm not the only one.

After a lengthy period of lackluster support, on Monday Sony Corp began a major push to put the PSP back in the spotlight it had enjoyed at its US launch in early 2005. A slew of titles were announced, including the debut of Rock Band Unplugged, for which extra songs will be downloadable via wifi. Incidentally, Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS was the top selling handheld game in the US in 2008, so a miniature Rock Band is not a total longshot. Other upcoming exclusive PSP games include LittleBigPlanet, Assassin's Creed, Madden NFL 10, and Motorstorm: Arctic Edge, all of which of course have their own busy soundtracks. And there will be a Hannah Montana rhythm game, which with any luck will coincide with the end of her 15 minutes. In a very welcome move, the games will also be interoperable with their PS3 console cousins.

Today Gamasutra ran an article titled "Behind The Charts: The Portable Rhythm Game Jam," about the discrepancy between the critic-and-gamer rhythm-action favorites Elite Beat Agent and Patapon, and those games' actual sales figures. EBA was voted Nintendo DS 2006 Game of the Year by IGN and Best Music/Rhythm Game of 2006 by GameSpot. But as of last month it had only sold 179,000 copies (according to NPD Group), when Nintendo had expected 300k in its first month on the market. It's worth mentioning that I don't think this figure includes used-games sales, which I suspect would be high for a game that only takes a handful of sessions to finish. I bought my used copy at Gamestop on Broadway for $10.

I'm waiting for Patapon to arrive at the office to see what it's really all about, but I've heard it's truly brilliant (trailer at bottom of post). Here's the Gamasutra description:

The Patapon... is a warrior tribe bent on reclaiming its land from the enemy Zigotons. Ultimately, the tribe finds meaning in a loftier goal and that quest leads them, literally, to the far end of the world. The player commands the Patapon in battle through a set of four talking drums, each mapped to one of the standard PlayStation controller face buttons. By tapping out command phrases in time with the game's background beat, the Patapon can be instructed to advance or retreat, attack or defend. Keep the beat well enough and the Patapons reach a fever pitch, during which their attacks are exceptionally potent.

Sounds great, but despite IGN's 2008 Best New IP award and GameSpot's Most Innovative Game for the year, and a huge promotional push from Sony, after one year on the market Patapon had sold only 229,000 units in the US. In contrast, Guitar Hero: World Tour, which cost around $50 because of the additional hardware that has to be attached to the DS unit, sold 1.1m copies in its first six months on sale.

So is the problem with rhythm games per se, or did the mighty GH brand make the crucial difference? Is it that handhelds are not well-suited for rhythm gameplay, or simply that the mass market will tend to favor familiar franchises over ground-breaking but unknown titles? The article and its commenters throw some ideas around, but the precise answer is obviously elusive. This will be a busy space for watching break-out hits and lamenting the ones that fell by the wayside.

We live in the future. More please.

Cute article at Games Radar on "Things gamers would never have believed 20 years ago." In at second place:

The Boss would be releasing new music through videogames.
-- The only example of games and rock colliding 20 years ago was the Atari 2600 effort, Journey Escape, which featured mullet-haired denim rockers, Journey... So who would have dared believe that, one day, video games would be used by such immense legends of rockery as Def Leppard (Guitar Hero III), Motley Crue (Rock Band), Guns N' Roses (Rock Band 2) and Bruce Springsteen (Guitar Hero World Tour) to debut songs? That's Bruce Springsteen. Born in the USA. The Boss. So massive the whole of the 80s could barely contain him and now, in the 21st Century, he's harnessing the power of games to release new music.

Adding: "A Nintendo console would be used for playing Sega and NEC games" and "That boring load times are still blighting us" are also good'uns. I have a mate in London called Alex Kydd. Photo from Game Radar piece.

Kids rock

A European Union report has concluded that games pose no threat to children, and that in fact they stimulate "learning of facts and skills such as strategic reflection, creativity, cooperation and a sense of innovation." The report pegs the total value of the European games market at $9bn, calls for the strengthening the existing "PEGI" voluntary content ratings system shared by the EU's 27 member states, stresses parental involvement over national bans, and reveals the average age of the European gamer as 33.

All jolly sensible. And therefore clearly inappropriate for policy. But as the song says, "The Kids Are Alright." For readers born post-1990, that's a track by the Who. They were great, the song's great, go download it. The Best of the Who is also available in Rock Band, all master tracks.

Well, he's paid tha cost

Snoop Dogg -- I'm so old I saw him live at a club in London when there was an extra Doggy in there -- is coming to Rock Band as part of a global-MTV-media-mega-deal that includes a weekly late-night variety show called "Dogg After Dark" set in an LA nightclub, an album with Dr Dre and Pharrel titled Malice in Wonderland, and "bringing hip-hop to" the Rock Band download store (fo'shizzle? I guess the Beasties don't count, huh*). No details on which tracks yet. The D-O-double-G indulges in a little Dali-esque third person license in the press release:

When [MTV overlord] Van Toffler and I sat down boss to boss, a global quintuple threat takeover was masterminded. The world of entertainment keeps changing, we felt it was the right time to let Snoop Dogg back on MTV so we could continue to run thangs (sic) with music, movies, DVDs and bring hip-hop to 'Rock Band'.

Word. So, hip-hop on RB. With DJ Hero set for release this year, we might finally be seeing a little musical/racial diversity in the rhythm game space.

*I picked up the remastered reissue of Paul's Boutique tonight. It's 25 years young and phatter than ever. I'm hearing layers and undertones on the CD that'll never make it through an MP3 compression. Sometimes only the best will do.

Make room for the mushrooms

Via Drum & Drummer blog.

Colbert maximum rock

The inspiration to finally get this blog on the move came this week, courtesy of The Colbert Report. As if any more proof of Stephen's "getting it" were needed, his 80's stalker classic "I'm Right Behind You Now, Charlene" has been available for free at the Rock Band online store for months. On Monday the game version of the song made an appearance on 'Better Know A District', with a freshman congressman managing 24% on guitar to Stephen's 100% on vocals.

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