Before Guitar Hero and Rock Band was another phenomenon of the music gaming genre: Dance Dance Revolution. Konami's "dancing" game bundled a peripheral and captured the media's attention with its kinetic "exergaming" play. Over the years, the franchise has dwindled in relevance, as gamers got tired of stomping their feet to moving arrows. Each iteration of the series brought new songs, but the gameplay turned stale, and gamers eventually put their peripherals in the closet.The same might be happening to the current slate of music games. NPD reports (via Gamasutra) that revenue for the Guitar Hero franchise have dropped 34% year over year. Even worse, the Rock Band franchise has dropped 67%. (Although, it should be noted that the Rock Band series has not had a major console release this year.)Jesse Divnich of EEDAR argues that "the music and rhythm genre is being monetized more closely in terms of a pop-culture fad," which explains the increasing number of releases we see from the Guitar Hero franchise. He argues that the window of opportunity for making money is limited and that both Activision and MTV Games are "[striking] when the iron is hot." The upcoming The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 may make a big splash this holiday season, but it might not be long until gamers put away the plastic instruments and look for the next big thing.
Ah I remember the first time I took my first steps on a DDR pad, it was fun stepping to high speed techno mixes of random hits. After 3-4 sessions it grew old very very quickly. I tried to reignite the fun by purchasing the new software, but I quickly learned that its the same thing over and over. Step on arrows, get a good score, pick new song. Lather, rinse, repeat. Much to my joy a new game launched called Guitar Hero! Now I could play the guitar to some of my favorite tunes. So I played and played and played and within about an hour of playing it, I got that old DDR boredom feeling. I was sick of this game as well...
Fast forward years later and we are on Guitar Hero 5 and there is a whole OTHER game out that DOES THE SAME THING, Rockband 2, nothing has changed, there is nothing revolutionary about these games, now instead of 1 guitar you can have a whole band! These are just novelty games, just like EVERY SINGLE BLOODY FPS HAS TO DO WITH SOME ALIEN/ZOMBIE/ROBOT ARMAGEDDON; AND YOU HAVE TO COWER BEHIND A WALL FOR 30 HOURS OF GAMEPLAY. OH AN CONTINUALLY PRESS UP OR LEFT ON THE D-PAD TO TELL YOUR GROUP WHERE TO GO! AND THEN A STRAY BULLET HITS YOU AND YOU ARE SENT BACK TO THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME..../rant
The video game industry like Hollywood needs to learn when to let something go, they both grab a hold of a basic layout and go with it, since the matrix came out I have seen every actio movie follow in its footsteps. It was cool back in 1999 to have that format, but nearly 11 years later we still have the same shit, bullet time mixed with 400 explosions and you have the perfect Michael Bay Film.
This goes for the gaming industry too, Halo RUINED FPS games, that came out and then 12 more come out with the same storyline and a control scheme that you need 4 degrees in bio-mechanics and metallurgy to get past the training levels. These music games are the same, press green, red, blue, yellow, white, purple, mauve at the same time and strum, repeat process, over and over. There are SOO few games out there that I classify as great/good and MOST of them come from the classics era. I love gaming, however these days I am paying 60 bucks for an interactive movie, not a game, this has got to change.
I wonder if DJ Hero will pick up where RockHero leaves off...
