Rock Band, Casual Games Headline EA's E3 Offering 34
The EA focus on family-oriented content, casual games, and expanding the gaming audience echoed the statements made at the Nintendo press conference earlier today. Next Generation has an overview of the EA press conference, which highlighted titles like Boogie and EA Playground. The company's cellphone game lineup also received some attention, and will feature properties such as Madden, Harry Potter, and Bejeweled. EA's ultimate goal is to 'lock up the 200 million casual gamers'. The presentation ended with a long Rock Band session; it was revealed that Metallica will play a heavy hand in the game's lineup. Other tracks shipping with the game at launch include: The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again," David Bowie's "Suffragette City," Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive," Rush's "Tom Sawyer," Nirvana's "In Bloom," Stone Temple Pilots' "Vaseline," and Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly."
Of course! (Score:5, Funny)
And after the whole Napster deal, we know how heavy-handed Metallica can be.
No Spore? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Interview, videos and new screenshots found here [ign.com]
As for the release date...
Any word on... (Score:2)
Metallica (Score:4, Funny)
Peripherals Galore (Score:3, Insightful)
My prediction is that the game will be released, but it won't be as popular as everyone hopes because of the high entry cost. Sure, I would love to be able to play my favorite music sim with people across the world, but why should I shell out $50-$80 for an electronic drum set or a microphone or a different guitar (because I doubt the SG controller from Guitar Hero will work on this) when I already paid $50 for a Guitar Hero controller that works just fine on Guitar Hero? The casual gamer doesn't want to spend needless amounts of money on peripherals every time you release a new game. Then on top of it, they expect you to pay even more money for extra songs. I don't like this business model and I hope they do something to fix it. Until then, I'll stick to GH3.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Go and read the background behind RedOctane and Harmonix. Lots of politics and contractual stuff going on but the upshot is that RedOctane produced the guitar peripheral and Harmonix wrote the software for it. Clearly the rights to the name and software were owned by RedOctane since Activision acquired them and now own the Guitar Hero brand. Harmonix have no rights to the brand at all, the software or to the controller. So they've have gone an
Rockband a GH rippoff ? (Score:2)
How can it be a rip off if it's developed by the same people (Harmonix) and they still have the original code? Activision bought the "Guitar Hero Franchise" but not the source code. Neversoft had program GH III from the ground up.
I suspect RockBand will Feel more like prior Guitar Heroes just based on that.
Re: (Score:2)
They've already said that GH guitars will work for guitar hero.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You would be hard pressed to find a musician or rock music fan (the target audience of guitar based music games) that has never heard of Rush. Everywhere in the US I have ever lived Rush has received regular airplay.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like to see prog find its way back... but with bands like Dream Theater now doing dungeons and dragons style lyrics (listen to their new album, if you can stand it) I think that's going to be kind of hard.
At this point, I'd like to see a resurgence of instrumental rock and jazz, but people se
Re: (Score:2)
Although, PT is a lot like Marillion, who have been doing great shit forever.
Oh, I was also on a big Flower Kings kick for about a year there
Re: (Score:2)
And I'm really glad. [Rush's] latest album is excellent
I must be in a minority here since I do not like Snakes and Arrows nearly as much as Vapor Trails which I liked less that Counter Parts, and of course anything from signals and earlier is even better yet. My issue with S&A is that it has no energy, no power. Vapor Trails had fast riffs, Counter Parts had hard driving rhythms, and the others mentioned were really the templates for Progressive Metal. I can remember the first time I heard Stick it Out, or One Little Victory, but I'm just not finding an
Re: (Score:2)
BTW: Counterparts, a template for ProgMetal? Dream Theater and Fates Warning were already around for quite a few years before that, and DT came out of the docket with a bang with WDADU (even if it didn't sell
Re: (Score:2)
Counterparts, a template for ProgMetal
I certainly never meant to imply that. I think Counterparts is a straight forward metal album. A good one, but not a progressive one. What I said was the "others", being Signals and earlier, where templates for Progressive Metal.
And I don't understand why you hold Signals as being one of their greatest
Signals was a turning point, it marked the end of an era, in my opinion the best era of Rush. The albums after Signals, which is a great album marred by poor production, up until counter parts can't really be classified as Metal let alone progressive. I mean how can an album fe
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Man, not where I live, I always hung out with people that were in bands, and I dont know of a single person that plays rock music that does not love RUSH.
Most tof the serious RUSH fans I know, are definitly not dorks, and had no problems getting laid etc... but might have a hard time holding a regular job now adays.
I really dont know where you got your idea that RUSH fans were dorks though, somehow I get a mental picture of a guy listening to Winger in h
Re: (Score:2)
You're right, there's definitely appeal in the musician crowd. I think that's true for a lot of very complex music. As for Rush's image, it's the same situati
Wonder what this will do to sales of GH3 (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a reason GH III is shipping before Rock Band... It HAS to. If I were Activision I would be pissed. They bought the GH franchise for something like 200 million dollars, and alrea