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Guitar Hero Developer Announces Rock Band

Posted by Zonk on Mon Apr 02, 2007 11:23 AM
from the those-who-are-about-to-rock-salute-you dept.
Entertainment Games
figgen writes "Gamers and music fans have been waiting on details for the next Harmonix project, now that the company has been purchased. The development team behind Guitar Hero announced Rock Band via USA Today. The title is coming to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and will expand on the concept by adding singing and drumming into the mix. 'With MTV as a partner, Harmonix was able to sign deals with the major forces in the music publishing industry and has access to the master recordings of music from popular artists. Electronics Arts is also involved, and will use its global reach to help distribute the game.' GameSpot had a chance to sit down with Harmonix's Alex Rigopulos and EA Partners' David DeMartini to talk about the upcoming title."
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[+] Rock Band As the Costly New MTV? 76 comments
With the announcement of Rock Band, fans of the Guitar Hero series are well and truly pleased. Despite the fact that GH controllers will work with the game, with all the peripherals the game is going to be ridiculously expensive, assuming you want to get an entire band together. "Specifically, the 'Rock Band Wireless Guitar Controller' will retail at $79.99 (40 quid approx), the standard 'Rock Band Guitar Controller' at $59.99 (30 quid approx), the 'Rock Band Drum Set' $79.99 and the 'Rock Band Microphone' at $39.99 (20 quid approx)." Beyond that, though, Kotaku's Brian Crecente takes a look at the game in a broader context, wondering aloud if the game will be a new version of MTV ... or at least, a new version of the way MTV used to be. Introducing new bands, songs, and sounds to consumers via videogames seems like a fairly natural way of trying things.
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  • Drummania comparison (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bugbeak (711163) on Monday April 02 2007, @11:35AM (#18575323)
    I find it a bit sad that Konami's own GuitarFreaks and Drummania series hasn't seen much coverage at all. I haven't played Guitar Hero, but to those who have, how do they compare?

    • Re:Drummania comparison (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mattintosh (758112) on Monday April 02 2007, @11:43AM (#18575453)
      1) I'm a non-PS2 player that heard about Guitar Hero and knew it was highly regarded without ever playing it. I had never heard of Guitar Freaks until after I had played Guitar Hero. So there's a marketing issue, at the very least.

      2) Apparently, other guitar games lack the over-the-top stereotyping of the characters presented in the game that GH has. I've not played any of the others, but I would assume that the "fun level" just isn't the same without the atmosphere GH builds.

      3) Guitar Freaks uses a different control scheme (and from what I gathered from the description, IMHO, it's probably "clunky").
      • I agree. The GH controller is far more intuitive to pick up and play. My neighbour and I both have a copy and we get the multiplayer mode going at most of our parties. Everyone loves it. GH definity has the humour factor too; for those who have never seen some of the unlockables, there is a 'fish' guitar with the following description: "This is a highly practical and effecient guitar. Because it looks like a fish."
    • Guitar Hero is significantly better than GuitarFreaks. I played GF a couple times at the arcade, and it just didn't do a lot for me. Guitar Hero, on the other hand, just seems to nail it a lot better. I don't know what it is - and it's not just the fact that GF does Japanese Music while GH does more American rock music either, as I know that I much prefer the Japanese DDR songs to the licensed stuff on the US home versions, and would much rather play on a grey market imported arcade machine.

      I hope they m

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MDiehr (1065156)
      The three big differences are: 1. Setlist - GH has Western Rock and Metal, I'm not sure how to describe Guitar Freak's setlist. 2. Number of frets - Guitar Freaks has 3, and Guitar Hero has 5. Guitar Hero emphasizes scales and chords a lot more. 3. How forgiving the timing is - Guitar Freaks requires a lot more precision to hit notes. Also, GH has a whammy bar.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by p0tat03 (985078)

      Having played both, here's why I prefer GH to GF:

      1 - Actual songs. Guitar Hero is only 50% about the game, the other 50% is the sheer fun factor of playing some great songs. I was never able to get into Guitar Freak's pseudo-electronica... It just didn't fit with the guitar thing.
      2 - 3 vs. 5 frets. This is huge. Guitar Freaks was sometimes too easy because of the fact that your fingers never truly move.
      3 - Better interface. The bottom-to-top scrolling lines got confusing when the game was going real fas

  • Whew (Score:5, Funny)

    by travdaddy (527149) <travo@linuxmail.oTIGERrg minus cat> on Monday April 02 2007, @11:40AM (#18575407)
    For a second there, I thought he had announced he was creating his own rock band. I can only imagine him playing a song hitting only five buttons while the fans all put out mats and step on them.

  • Single player mode? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Daetrin (576516) on Monday April 02 2007, @11:42AM (#18575423)
    I can't read TFA from work, but does it mention what the single player options are? The coverage on GamesAreFun.com [gamesarefun.com] indicated that the proposed solution to not having enough people locally to form a band on a regular basis is to do so online. That's good and all for those people who like online play, but all the friends i have who might be interested in playing a game like this are local, and when they're not available i'm not really interested in trying to find random strangers on the net to play with. So is there a single player option or are you just out of luck in that case?
    • Nothing, so far as I know, has been announced yet, but I would assume it's much like Guitar Hero/Karaoke Revolution career modes have already been: you play solo with a computer-controlled band and the co-op stuff is kept separate. Basically like how Guitar Hero II had co-op guitar/bass (or rhythm guitar), but instead they'll likely make it into a proper career mode (you have a band name, have to beat songs to advance, etc.).
    • Worse, check out this quote:

      "You could have one guitarist in Germany and another one in Texas, a drummer in New York and a singer from somewhere else, and they can play together online," EA's David DeMartini says.

      Germany? Not with 200+ ms lag from an overseas connection. I hope they work out latency issues as low-fi, choppy, and unreliable best define VOIP aplications. Music is going to require more bandwidth and less latency than VOIP stuff the game industry can't get right today. I can see this as a pro

      • Germany? Not with 200+ ms lag from an overseas connection.
        If the rule of the game is that any mistakes in the song are played as corresponding mistakes one measure later on other players' machines, then the gameplay can survive a 1000 ms ping.

  • Genius way to develop this game. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kinglink (195330) on Monday April 02 2007, @11:45AM (#18575473)
    First they release Karaoke revolution, a game that's popular in Japan and now in America.

    Karaoke revolution 2 introduces Duets for Americans.

    Then they release Guitar hero, a game that explodes in popularity.

    Then they release Guitar hero 2, introducing the cooperative guitar players.

    And now they release Rock band, a game which takes everything they learned and adds drums into it. Plus working with EA probably helps them get online working which can only improve the game.

    Hell I could even mention frequency and amplitude for timing and visualization but the point is that they essentially made every part of this game into it's own game except for drumming. Very cool Harmonix.
    • Donkey Konga took care of the drums for them... At least as much as beating a monkey... you know I'm just gunna stop there and cut my losses.

  • Oh, dear... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Monday April 02 2007, @11:47AM (#18575517) Homepage Journal
    I'm worried about the singing aspect. While it's lots of fun to use a simple row of controller buttons to trigger pre-recorded power chords and sound like a pro, there's really no way to amateur-proof singing. I am not a fan of "Karaoke Revolution," or just plain Karaoke for that matter.
    • Girls tend to like singing games more than boys, boys tend to like GH-like games more than girls. So with this you've got a game you can play with a member of the opposite sex. Unless you both like the same instrument, of course, then you'll have to play with your second preference.

      And now we only have to mix it also with dancing on a mat while doing moves seen by a cam. Make yourself a Music Idol! (gosh, I've just imagined the steretypical slashdotter doing this, I gotta cleanse my mind)
  • While this sounds great (for everyone except us Wii owners) I'm wondering exactly how multiplayer will work when you're playing live with three other people. Simply put there doesn't appear to be enough space on the screen to put up notation for four. Even putting up bars for two players was a little tight in previous games, but now you'll have to deal with guitar and bass tracks (vertical if they stick with the past), a vocal track (probably horizontal) and a completely unknown style of drumming track to d
      • Perhaps. It'll remain to be seen how well it works for this game, especially since the vocals will likely be notated horizontally while guitar and bass will probably continue to be notated vertically.

        The greater issue is that if it only really works for a 16:9 this will be rather unpleasant for the vast majority of gamers who do not own a 16:9 display.
  • I read a quote from one of the developers on Kotaku so I'm hoping this gets done.

    Absolutely, we will at some time bring Rock Band to every console of significance and in doing so we will customize and tailor the play experience to take into account the weakness of the console and the strengths of the consoles," he said. "I think (the Wii) is something that holds enormous potential for music games.

    http://kotaku.com/gaming/wii/wii-rock-band-likely- 248882.php [kotaku.com]

    • I know that I can't wait for a WiiGuitar type game. Might be possible to make a great game with the Wiimate/Nunchuk as well!

  • Drat (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aarku (151823) on Monday April 02 2007, @12:20PM (#18576071) Journal
    Drumming with the Wii remote and nunchuck ala Rayman Raving Rabbids [wikipedia.org] would have been fun. Is the Wii not beefy enough for their intentions or something?
    • I've been jokingly referring to RRR as Drum Hero. Although they could sure go for some better songs than "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" - that's a little difficult "Dude, check it out, I just aced the Drum Solo part of GJWHF!!" falls a little bit flat.
  • This game would work online, cross platform (Guitars handled by ps3/x360, and the drums handled by the wii with 2 wiimotes), and would let you write your own songs, and submit them to an online archive. Then, people could use these songs to dance to DDDR3revolutionextreeeem! I hope they get more master tracks. Listening to that Guy do his best Kurt Cobain on "heart shaped box" on GH2 was pretty damn painful. Same with the guy who was singing the RATM song. But man, was it fun to play John the Fisherman

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by RCSInfo (847666)
      I'm glad I'm not the only one who took issue with the singing in GH2. While I understand the great reviews for such a fun game, I couldn't believe how many reviewers actually liked the singing. For as much money as this series brings in, you think they could bring in the original artist for a few tracks. How much does Zack de la Rocha fetch for a performance these days? Matthew Sweet? The lead singer of Warrant?

      Of course this doesn't work for Nirvana or Lynyrd Skynyrd. But at least they could do a l
    • Your dream world is my private hell

  • GF (Score:2, Informative)

    by Ydbhon (1083237)
    GuitarFreaks? Easier even with 3 frets? GF is leagues harder than Guitar Hero. Go look up tatsujins for that game. Search "Concertino in Blue" in YouTube and then tell me that's not easier than the hardest of what GH offers.
  • >> The development team behind Guitar Hero announced Rock Band

    and later on they will announce Rock Star, where you become popular for your controversial songs and famed for holding off even more controlversial shameless fame-seeking attorneys.
  • I hosted a party this weekend and one of the attendees was a coder from Harmonix. Some of the guys there were leaning on him to let the cat out of the bag as to this press release. He finally relented and told us that the new game was called "Flute Hero" and in it you had to master different crazy jazz songs. We were kindof suspicious, but then he jumped into this story about how everyone went nuts over Ron Burgundy's ability to play the jazz flute. At this point he started pantomiming game play. Funny

  • How will this even work? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by EvilCabbage (589836) on Monday April 02 2007, @07:24PM (#18581297) Homepage
    Serious question. How do they expect to make this work?

    I'm a fan of the Guitar Hero series, my wife loves it too and her girlfriends really enjoy the Singstar series of games. We were discussing a 'Band Hero' style game a few nights ago while they belted out some crap pop songs, but how is this going to work, honestly?

    Two people playing Guitar Hero takes up a whole lot of screen real estate, as does a pair of people singing together. How are they going to combine the two and somehow add drums to the mix?

    I'd love it to happen, but honestly I don't see how this is going to work terribly well. Even on our gaming display (not massive, but 42") it would get very crowded, very quickly with instructions, guides, scoring, etc..etc...etc..
    • If you're going to dream, dream big. Imagine if you applied that standard (play your own instruments, write your own songs), to popular music. The Billboard top 100 would have about 2 dozen songs left.

    • It's known as a "game." (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Monday April 02 2007, @11:42AM (#18575441) Homepage Journal

      I'm gonna produce a Playstation game that just flashes up some scrolling text, stating the following:
      Learn to play REAL instruments, and write your OWN fucking songs.
      Will that come before or after the ones that scroll "drive your OWN fucking NASCAR vehicle," "join your OWN fucking Major League Baseball team," or "get your OWN fucking BFG 9000 to blow up REAL demons from Hell?"
      • There are games that are simulation of real life events, and those that are completely fantasy based. In most cases, it would be better if more people did the actual activity rather than the dumbed down simulation ( excluding the obvious GTA, first person shooter genre).

        that being said, simulating activities that you can't actually do, or would be dangerous to do makes more sence. This might not be a popular "opinion" here, but from everything I've witnessed, its probably true.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by starwed (735423)
          You do realize that many real life rockstars play GH, right? And that trained drummers are often better than guitarists at it? :)
          • obviously. Just like real NFL stars play madden. They did not become rockstars by playing Guitar Hero, just like NFL stars didn't make it to the NFL by playing madden. If you actually do the real thing enough, obviously you don't need to worry about not doing the real thing enough. But if a pro Football player did nothing but play madden, he wouldn't be a good football player for much longer. I suspect he same would be true of a rockstar, although to a lesser extent.

            It doesn't change the fact that GH is a

            • They did not become rockstars by playing Guitar Hero, just like NFL stars didn't make it to the NFL by playing madden.

              No, but they probably had fun playing those games, which is what games are meant to be for. I doubt many GH players retain any illusions about the efficacy of the toy guitar connected to their XBox as an actual guitarist training tool.

              To put it another way, I'm currently reading a detective novel. It's quite an enjoyable read, but should I be upset because the characters in the book aren

          • Playing guitar is entirely different than playing guitar hero. Guitar hero is rhythm based, and has nothing in common with real guitar playing other than the rough shape of the instrument. Comparing guitar hero to actually playing is like (insert OMG bad car analogy about hot grits on nat portman with a pony overlord named c.neil in soviet russia)
            That would be why drummers do better... all they have to do is hit something...
        • You can pick up a guitar, and learn to play in a few years of actual practice or you can have fun with Guitar Hero after 2 or 3 minutes of figuring out the controller.
      • It's not practical to drive a car or play baseball in your room, but you can play a guitar.

      • "get your OWN fucking BFG 9000 to blow up REAL demons from Hell?"


        I am intrigued by your idea, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

      • Will that come before or after the ones that scroll "drive your OWN fucking NASCAR vehicle," "join your OWN fucking Major League Baseball team,"

        Yeah, actually. I never did get the whole "let's pay money to watch *somebody else* play a game" thing.

    • I think you're confusing the concept of "work" vs. "entertainment". I love my FPS but I'm not gonna buy a gun and learn to snipe.

      • I love my FPS but I'm not gonna buy a gun and learn to snipe.
        Or you could get hired by an army recruiter, and the army will buy you a gun and pay you to learn to snipe.

    • So what company wants to publish your music composition software for a PlayStation platform?

      Still, if I write my own songs, play real instruments, and put my recordings on the Internet, then how do I keep from being sued by a major music publisher for alleged subconscious infringement of copyright? See Wikipedia articles My Sweet Lord [wikipedia.org] and Cryptomnesia [wikipedia.org], citing Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (SDNY 1976) [columbia.edu].

    • Pay over 400 bucks apiece for a console and the peripherals.

      Or go to a bar, find the biggest redneck you can, insinuate that he likes guys and that you slept with his mother, and street fight for real...

      I guess kombat's more fun when it's manufactured.

    • Re:FIST SPORT! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Aladrin (926209) on Monday April 02 2007, @12:03PM (#18575779)
      You're trolling, but I'm gonna bite anyhow.

      Yeah, the music lessons and years of practice don't enter into the equation at all, eh? Not everyone is a musical god and can just look at an instrument and play it. The non-musicians of the world sometimes actually enjoy to pretend to make music in a game environment.

      Games are for having fun, and Guitar Hero really hit a chord (haha) with some people. They obviously expect that Rock Band will, too.

      • Not everyone is a musical god and can just look at an instrument and play it.

        Fortunately, that is not a prerequisite for having fun (really) playing music....

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