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.)
The ideas expounded upon in this Epicenter Q&A with Vint Cerf -- one of the "creators" of the Internet and now Chief Information Evangelist at Google -- on Recession, Recovery, and Innovation in Hard Times are not music/game specific, but both businesses will benefit from paying attention to what he has to say. And I never knew that he looks almost exactly like The Architect from The Matrix, which in a way makes sense.
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.
My post last week on music promotion via iPhone apps preempted a smattering of news on the subject. Yes, I have special powers too weird to go into right now.
MusicAlly reports that Universal Music Group acts Lady Gaga, the Pussycat Dolls, Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em, the All American Rejects, and Keri Hilson are all releasing apps today. They're all free, and include "video content from the artists’ Kyte channels, as well as branding and advertising, click-through links to buy music and merchandise, a built-in RSS reader to pull in news updates, and community features like chat, comments and sharing."
Small bespoke games will be an utterly normal element of these packages in the near future.
And there's this from Wired's Gadget Lab on the introduction of paid apps to Google's HTC G1 phone and any other device running the Android mobile OS. Apple/iTunes keeps a tight rein on what kinds of apps it will sell, and keeps 30% of the revenues they generate. The open Android app market has no approval system, and all the coin will go to the app makers.
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.
Ars Technica reports that cheeky chanteuse Lily Allen's label is crediting a Flash game with boosting interest in, and hence sales of, her single "The Fear." EMI-owned Parlophone hired viral marketing company Matmi to create an "advergame" to promote Ms Allen's release. Matmi came up with a wee platformer called "Escape the Fear," which has apparently been played over 2m times, for an average of five minutes a go, with "tens of thousands" of clickthroughs to downloads and pre-orders. "The Fear" is charting worldwide and has been #1 in the UK for all of February.
A story on Wired's Epicenter blog, ostensibly about an iPhone app offering all four albums by 90's guitar-string dodgers The Presidents of the United States of America, offers a glimpse into the potential for mobile apps to forge a new music market. Apple has led the way but RIM and Android will be along shortly, if they know what's good for them.
Points of note: - Dave Dederer, former singer and guitarist for the band, is now vice president of business development for mobile audio company Melodeo. - Crucially, he and his bandmates retained the full rights to all their music. Since the iPhone store is open(ish) he can do what he likes with his own content and avoids the licensing entanglements that usually make such efforts hugely problematic. - For $3, fans old and hopefully new get access to (via streaming) four albums, rare and live recordings, and anything else the band wants to make available. Plus updates. - Next step is more bands with their own versions. A label-centric app for Seattle-based Sub Pop is hinted at.
From the article:
Dederer also said Melodeo is looking at the idea of using the iPhone app store to promote albums before their official release, circumventing the old way of "paying tens or or hundreds of thousands of dollars in... to get the album in heavy rotation on the radio." He continued, "instead of paying for exposure, you let the fans pay for the right to preview the music -- they can't own it, it's going to be streaming -- and have them link through to iTunes to pre-purchase the album."
Joystiq reports on the nominations for the Game Audio Network Guild awards, the development community's top honours for video game sound design and music. The PS3's Little Big Planet has the most noms with eight, followed by World of Warcraft (5), Fable II, Gears of War 2, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Dead Space (4 each). The full list of recognized games -- aka titles to acquire for the NYU-MVGRP library -- is at the link above. Voting is open now at the GANG site.
From the perspective of this blog, the category list provides a useful classification system for audio design and music in games. The top award is for Audio of the Year, followed by Music OTY, Sound Design OTY, and Best Soundtrack Album. Then it gets into the nitty-gritty. Best Interactive Score, Handheld Audio, Audio - Other (??), Cinematic Cut-Scene Audio, Dialogue, Original Instrumental, Original Vocal - Choral, Original Vocal - Pop, Best Use of Licensed Music, Best Game Audio Article, Publication or Broadcast, and Best use of Multi-Channel Surround in a Game.
There's a lot of music business going on in that lot...
This is a fantastic article from a Hypebot series in which indie music sector professionals are asked, "In this fractured media landscape, what is working? What outlets and tools are helping your artists build an audience?" The guys at Asthmatic Kitty give one of the most lucid and positive responses you'll ever read to this kind of question. Not going to summarize here, except to concur with them that the frequent and spectacular failures of "sprinters" should not be distractions to the "marathon runners" -- even asthmatic felines. As Mr Colbert would say, "These guys get it!"
Ran into two contradictory headlines on music games over the weekend. The Motley Fool (I had no idea they were still around after dotcom era 1.0) goes with Activision is Music to My Ears, reporting on the Guitar Hero publisher's holiday quarter net profits of $429 million, adding:
The company doesn't break out sales or profits by product line, but it was happy to announce that Guitar Hero III has passed the $1 billion sales mark. Guitar Hero: World Tour was the best-selling console game of the quarter, dollar for dollar. And Nintendo may rule the handheld sales charts in number of units shifted, but Guitar Hero: On Tour collected more money than any other handheld game in 2008.
See a pattern here? So do Vivendi-Blizzard's management, and the analysts following the company. In that conference call, the best-selling PC game franchise World of Warcaft was mentioned 15 times, and the equally successful Call Of Duty 20 times. Guitar Hero got 47 mentions, plus another nine for the upcoming Metallica expansion -- more than even "sales" (27 mentions).
The author also notes that Europe is just getting started on GH and RB, that penetration in Japan is a possibility, and that Activision Blizzard "will live and die with the Guitar Hero franchise."
So it's all coming up roses until I see Music Games Fall Off a Cliff, in reference to a Silicon Valley Insider article titled Guitar Zero: Gamers Growing Bored Of Music Games. The horror! Apparently earnings at Viacom (owner of MTV and Rock Band) are being dragged down by a sales slump in RB, and that Activision is even more poorly placed to deal with the apparent collapse because it was "doubling down" on music games, hyping more GH titles and the upcoming DJ Hero. The SVI piece includes:
We're a bit surpised at how quickly music game sales are falling, but not by the general downturn. Two factors at work here: First, music games sold so amazingly well the past few years the market is approaching its saturation point ... Music games were, basically, a very 2008 sort of fad. And all fads come to an end."
I'm with the Motley Fool on this, and find the SVI analysis to be very narrow. No mention of the suddenly alarming economy and the effect it might be having on entertainment industry revenues; no mention of the massive popularity of downloaded tracks and song packs to GH and RB; no mention of this year's Beatles game, which will grow the rhythm games market to include all sorts of people who hate Aerosmith and/or Metallica; and the fact that music games are ruling the PS2 charts, still the most widely owned console in the world. And these are just the most obvious blind spots. Music and video games are going to continue to expand each others' overall businesses in ever more harmonious and lucrative ways. There's a bigger picture here that post-holiday-season sales drop-offs are not going to reflect adequately.
FAO Activision and/or Harmonix MTV: I can haz Franz Ferdinand song download pack? The original GH had a (pretty bad) cover of "Take Me Out," def time for an upgrade. Kthxbai!
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.)
