Guitar Hero III sells records.
It’s no big surprise that the Guitar Hero franchise is positively affecting sales of the respective music artists’ songs. I know this because after jamming out with Guitar Hero III (GH3), I had the slightest desire to hop onto iTunes and buy some of the better GH3 tracks. What this is, is an opportunity for record labels to make Guitar Hero’s developers a bit more coin, and bring delight to GH3 fans everywhere.
Let me explain. Record companies are constantly whining like little girls that digital downloads are ruining their business, despite any real evidence supporting these claims. Nonetheless, to recoup some of these purported losses, record companies could bundle key sets for Guitar Hero games in with their physical CDs, thus creating an incentive for gamers to buy these CDs instead of running to iTunes. Or, they could even include this type of bonus with digital downloads, by cranking the price up a tad a bit (say, 25 cents). Most gamers would gladly pay this for more Guitar Hero action, and the overhead is minimal for the extra content. (Heck, an intern should be able to crank out Guitar Hero tabs for different songs easily.)
Everyone wins with this type of setup. Sadly, record companies are so stupid, we’ll likely never see this type of Guitar Hero extensibility.
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I agree with everything you said, but hope the developers of Rock Band do it instead of Guitar Hero III (GH3). GH3 shows all the signs of a sequel turned out for a quick buck by people who did not invent the game. Major difficulty balancing issues and very little improvement in concept (if any) over GH2, make GH3 a dissappointment. Of the pre-release Rock Band (the game made by the original developers of GH and GH2) reviews I have read, many specifically point out that Rock Band has a smooth transition between difficulty levels and sets, unlike GH3 which has a “way too” Easy mode and a “quite difficult” Medium mode. Many GH3 players, including myself, find themselves stuck between two difficulty modes, one that is not challenging at all and one that is nothing but frustrating. It’s as if the GH3 developers only play tested the game on players with 1000 hours each of GH experience.
I will withhold judgment on Rock Band until I play it myself next week, but my bet is that they nail the genre and expose GH3 for the flawed work it is. Also, Activision just released all the downloadbale content immediately on the way for Rock Band (http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/15107/Rock-Band-First-Wave-of-Downloadable-Content-Revealed/). It really looks like the Rock Band folks have their act together, versus the GH crew, that appears to be just out to take your money.