Age/Gender: 19, Male
Location: Wirral, UK
HEY THERE!
Newgrounds Stats
Whistle Status: Deity
Exp. Points: 18,970 / 19,580
Exp. Rank #: 213
Voting Pow.: 8.30 votes
BBS Posts: 20,462 (10.74 per day)
Flash Reviews: 1,243
Music Reviews: 4
Trophies: 5
Stickers: 0
Entry #98
Gaming Industry Bullshit Rants - Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 2)
Posted by Bahamut Jun. 22, 2009 @ 8:01 AM EDTPrevious rants:
Guitar Hero/Rock Band (Part 1)
Nintendo: Overview
Nintendo DS
Wii _____ Games
Wii games
Virtual Console
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo DSi
--------------------
Hello all and welcome to the second part of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band rant. Previously, I mentioned how obsessed people are with the whole craze and how if some of them are that dedicated to playing music, why can't they pick up a real instrument.
So what else is wrong with these games? How about the expenses for this game? Now it's only natural for the game with peripherals whether it be just the guitar or a full rock band kit to cost a little extra, but when you think about it, do they have to charge £150 for the desired game, a guitar, a microphone and a drum?! The game with a guitar was £70 RRP, so that's another £80 coming out of your pockets for two more peripherals. Although Rock Band's kit with the game has gone down in price, it used to be that much at first and since the release of Guitar Hero: World Tour, Activision want to charge their customers £150 for the whole thing.
These peripherals are rather overcharged, most especially when the craze expanded beyond just playing a guitar. £75 would be more reasonable since it'd be £35 for the guitar, £35 for the drums and £5 for the microphone. However, these companies LOVE to suck as much money as possible from their customers, although EA have had the decency to cut down the price of their Band in a Box. Activision on the other hand, doesn't look like they'll cut down the price anytime soon.
What else is so bad about the expenses for these games? Downloadable Content which has a fee. As small as it may be, it's actually sad to think how much you have to pay for the desired tracks. Now to be fair, some expense would have been acceptable, most especially when they offer to let you play an entire album (e.g. Judas Priest's Screaming for Vengeance, Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy, etc), but the fact that they charge you at least £1.70 for one track is despicable.
Let's look at how much iTunes charge you for music. A single track only costs 79p. It might be a little higher or lower than that for whichever track you look at, but that's the usual price. A track you pay for 79p, you can put on your MP3 Player, play it on your favourite media software or even play the track on a music rhythm game known as Audiosurf, but we'll get to that later. Now what can you do with a single track you purchase from Guitar Hero/Rock Band? You can play them on whichever game the track is for and....That's it. So unless you hack the game and export the track as an MP3 file, you're paying roughly twice the amount to play a track on these games and only to play on these games than to listen to it on your media player, your MP3 Player and even use it on a completely different music rhythm game.
What's worse, imagine if you bought a certain track from iTunes already and had to pay for it AGAIN just to play it on these games! Let's say you buy an Iron Maiden track from iTunes and really enjoyed what you heard. You then find out that the same track you picked up from iTunes is also available to download from Rock Band. You'd think to yourself, "Hey, that's good news!" but it all goes downhill as soon as you hear you have to pay around £1.70 for the desired track when you already bought it from iTunes. Wouldn't you hate having to pay for the same track twice?
Same thing can be said for albums where you buy one album you really like and then find out on Rock Band you have to pay for the entire album AGAIN! So that's spending roughly £10 for the album itself and then another £10 for the DLC on whichever game it's available for. Now this wouldn't be as bad if you only get the album via DLC and not a retail or an actual digital purchase, but the fact that they charge you that much just to play more tracks on the games when they should be charging much less is appalling.
These tracks should really be charged for 20p per track. If that's far too low for the companies, then what about 40p? That's a more reasonable price for a track which can only be played on Guitar Hero/Rock Band. If that's still too low for the companies, then they can get the hell outta here. The only excuses they'd come up with are "Ohh we're suffering recession, please spare us a few more pennies to make us last longer." or "Ohh there's far too many people downloading these tracks from the internet illegally." The former is already an invalid argument as Guitar Hero and Rock Band are published by Activision and EA respectively, while the latter, just have a look at the records charts and tell me if the sales are suffering or not. Trust me, they're not! Sure, there's a good amount of people who aren't buying music for squat, but there are many people who still buy music legitimately and it's actually more than enough for the record companies to survive.
Unless it's a track that becomes neglected for a long time, these companies won't reconsider the fees for their DLC and it's a damn shame. Now that's the expense issues covered, there's still one more topic to go through concerning Guitar Hero and Rock Band and if you've been keeping yourself up to date with the craze, then you already know what's next.
I didn't think I'd be going onto a third part here, but it happens. Due to my little schedule with my next two news posts, I won't be making another rant until after my birthday, which is on 12th July. I know it'll be a while before another rant is posted, but it'll be here before you know it.
The People Have Spoken
11 Comments
