With all its innovations, peripherals and gameplay features, Guitar Hero approximates the experience of playing a guitar pretty accurately. What it hasn’t yet mastered, however, is making the player feel more like another rock star of the modern world: the air guitarist. Like the ancient Celtic bard, the air guitarist floats through life as though [...]
Some people are really, really good at Rock Band. These are truly kings and queens of partying. You invite them thinking, “What the heck? Everybody can play on Easy, right? And I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t know the words to ‘Livin’ on a Prayer.” Then, two hours and six albums later, you find [...]
The most rockin’ game on the modern consoles pretty much demands an encore, and EA is prepared to deliver:
EA announced today that the “first DLC” (that means there’ll be more, right?) for recently released Brütal Legend will be arriving November 3 and November 5 on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, respectively. Named “Tears of the [...]
Video games, as a medium, have cultural relevance and mass appeal pretty much anywhere. I like to think the fun of controlling a virtual person (or vehicle, or little yellow incomplete circle) is truly universal. But some nations have a gaming culture all their own. We already talked about Russian cosplayers celebrating S.T.A.L.K.E.R., so today [...]
The decline of the music game industry has been a topic of particular interest for me over the past two weeks. Even as The Beatles: Rock Band soared into the public eye and Guitar Hero 5 battled controversy over Kurt Cobain, I’ve had the sense that this genre is in danger. The trend’s momentum is [...]
Who’s really behind the wheel of the video game industry? The NPD group says that households with children are still the biggest video game purchasers. Check it out:
Though the median age of video gamers has increased dramatically over the past decade, a recent report from the NPD Group shows that youngsters still possess a great [...]
The Beatles: Rock Band will soon be upon us, and we’ll know in a few days whether its sheer star power can rescue the music-games industry from its current doldrums. Whether The Beatles is more ‘Hey Jude’ or ‘Within You, Without You’ (apologies to all both of you WYWY fans?) we can’t say, but we [...]
The music games industry is struggling. Nobody can deny the slowing sales of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. It seems America has gotten over the plastic-guitar craze and will soon be moving on to more traditional games. But don’t count Harmonix out yet. The music game grand-daddies, once a humble ‘music tech’ company, [...]
One great rock show can change the world, but one great rock game might break the bank. Gamers and Fab Four fans grumbling about the cost of The Beatles Rock Band may be happy to learn that Viacom shares their troubles. 1UP tells us:
…NPD analyst Anita Frazier said, “Of all genres, the music/dance genre has [...]
I’m sure it’s happened in more than one household on Christmas morning – kids open a new music game, and rejoice! It’s Rock Band, and you already have the instruments for Guitar Hero, or vice versa. The kids slide the disc in their console du juor (which means “do zhor” in English), only [...]
