Rock Band 3 Officially Announced For Holiday 2010 76
An anonymous reader writes "Philippe Dauman, Viacom CEO and President, announced today that Harmonix is currently working on the next Rock Band game, Rock Band 3, due for release Holiday 2010. 'The company is pursuing the game in spite of an industry-weakening decline in the once-booming genre of peripheral-equipped music games. Although the franchise has generated over $1 billion to date, the category in general saw sales contract by as much as half throughout 2009. MTV Games parent Viacom also saw Rock Band declines drag on its balance sheet in its last fiscal quarter, and expressed a need to refocus away from pricey peripherals in favor of software. It also said that due to royalties it would need to be more "selective" about track listings, and that it needs more support from the music industry in that department.'"
Re:Meh (Score:5, Interesting)
Contracting Sales (Score:4, Interesting)
...the once-booming genre of peripheral-equipped music games. Although the franchise has generated over $1 billion to date, the category in general saw sales contract by as much as half throughout 2009
Maybe its because the same peripherals could be used from Rock Band with Rock Band 2? The upfront cost of the game initially is expensive but once you have the guitars, microphone, and drum set the cost is significantly cheaper to move to a new edition and that's where the sales start to contract. The same goes for the Guitar Hero series also.
Personally, I think the genre has entered its maturity when it comes to growth and needs some drastic change or needs to evolve into something different. One solution might be introducing new peripherals but they need more advanced peripherals because at this point you need to justify paying for another 15 pounds of plastic.
Weak offering in 2009 (Score:3, Interesting)
So, what happened in 2009?
Rock Band 2 was released in 2008, and had some time to die down before 2009. Same for Guitar Hero World tour.
Harmonix released Beatles Rock Band. Were they expecting that to do as well as Rock Band 2? The only logic I can see to Beatles Rock Band is that maybe they are hoping that Beatles fans are like Star Trek fans; there are some compulsive enough to pay any price for anything branded with their favorite franchise. (Before you get angry, The Beatles could have made a great series of track packs, but you cannot expect one band to carry half the industry).
I own Guitar Hero 5. It's alright, but most reviews complained about a weak song list, and Guitar Hero Van Halen didn't exactly bring people to stores.
So, is it possible that the decline was due to a weak offering in 2009? These companies are shooting themselves in the foot by providing an even weaker offering in 2010.
Holiday is related to Black Friday (Score:3, Interesting)