Major Nelson Frames the GH II DLC Discussion

Yesterday we discussed the mighty expensive Guitar Hero II downloadable content. Some readers had serious complaints, and their views jive with a lot of other commentators out there. Prior to an event related to the game Joystiq had the chance to sit down with Microsoft's Major Nelson, who attempted to frame the conversation and point out the difficulties associated with this project: "I used to work in the broadcasting industry and in music for a long time and I know that content is not linear. It's not like you go to iTunes, and you're buying the same thing. There's testing that's involved, and there's also licensing involved. There's a lot of elements involved. When there's music involved, that brings up a lot of licensing issues ... You have to consider the Leaderboard. People like to say it's the same [as on the PS2], but the licensing is not the same. You have to re-license it. It's a different platform. While on the surface it may look fairly simplistic, and people are saying 'XYZ should be done,' but we're not Red Octane. I work for Microsoft, and we're just the conduit at this point."

Re: Is that Half a boycott each?

[trdrstv]

I caved in. I wasn't going to buy them at that price but I was playing GH2 last night and my wife commented that $2 a song wasn't too much as far as she was concerned and I should buy them. Live Marketplace makes it too easy to buy stuff hehe. So I ended up with packs #2 and #3. But I won't buy #1 for that price damn it! I'm making a stand!

Then between the 2 of us we have 1 honest boycott. I bought pack #1, but won't buy the other two (just don't like them as much). That'll teach them! Damn them and their capitolist ways!