Rejoyce: Rock Band Instruments with Guitar Hero World Tour

Simply amazing news coming out of E3 last night, apparently the Rock Band instruments will work with the new Guitar Hero World Tour game.  This may only be true with the Xbox 360 version of the title, as Activision didn’t want to comment on Wii, PlayStation 2 or PlayStation 3 yet.

Activision deserves a cup cake for this strategic move, providing Rock Band gamers a money saving option and increasing their own sales. If you’ve listened to our latest gaming podcast episode, you’ll notice Jennifer changed her mind on World Tour because of the new Rock Band 2 news. In short, if you own Rock Band you can now buy Rock Band 2 game-only without having to re-purchase the equipment. Why would you then go out and buy more instruments for Guitar Hero World Tour?

Rock Band has solidified itself as the next-generation of rock gaming by showing us more than a simple guitar interface. Building a “me too” product after Rock Band and requiring us all to purchase yet more equipment is a deal breaker for a good portion of gamers.

Thank you Activision for making a product we’re actually going to purchase now, instead of passing on it due to limitations of the wallet!

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NXE, Theme Packs, Avatars and ImpressionsNXE, Theme Packs, Avatars and Impressions

We’ve had some time to look through the New Xbox Experience (aka Fall Update 08) for the Xbox 360. There are some goods, bads and oddities about the latest updated firmware and thought it was a good time to share.

The most important feature we’ve found with the new console software is the addition of Netflix. The ability to play software in the “Instant Queue” is excellent, fast and done with high quality. If you have children this may be one of the must-have product features; add a ton of family movies to the Netflix Instant Queue and your children will have hours of entertainment.

We’re not telling you to sit the children in front of the TV for ten hours, but it proves to be a great way to get quality entertainment without bombarding them with commercials telling them to tell you they need new stuff. This is especially true around the holidays where kids are watching more commercials than actual episodes of Sponge Bob Square Pants.

We were a non-Netflix household and recently bought into their second tier program so we can watch instant shows and get one DVD at a time. The NXE has up-sold at least one new Netflix customer, great job Microsoft!

Avatars are another “feature” to the new console software and it all seems very Wii like. Months ago we were kidding about how they’re cloning some features of the Wii but in reality, it’s more a clone than we thought. The sound track while creating your Avatar feels almost ripped from the Wii in terms of cute settling sounds and silly uplifting music. This isn’t your dad’s console anymore Timmy.

The outfits to dress your Mii, oops, avatar in are very limited and you’ll no doubt see a lot of sameness in dress and overall look to the avatars. But, now Microsoft is showing us how to differentiate ourselves by purchasing virtual items to make our avatars cooler. For 250 Microsoft points you can now buy a Ninja Blade theme pack which includes wallpapers and avatar items. Yay. No, seriously, we’re supposed to buy this crap?

The NXE also supports a full system re-design, out with the blades in with the… Cover Flow? The NXE now acts more like iTunes, the iPod and the Apple OS X more than ever. You’ll breeze through your game list, NetFlix Queue, Friends List and other features as if it were Cover Flow album art. Cool in some ways, frustrating in others.

In some ways, item lists are the fastest and easiest ways to view things. For instance, prior to NXE you could tell who was online in your friends list within a few seconds. Now, with NXE you’ll troll through your friends list four-by-four flying through the “art” of your friends avatars hanging out next to a “room” mimicking the game they’re playing. Cute, no doubt, but not an effective way to see who is online.

The in-game console pop-up windows are much cleaner and easier to browse using a mini-blade style approach to finding information. This new re-design allows you to get more from your console interface while in-game than ever before.

The one neglected feature, in my humble opinion, is the “spit and polish” of the new interface. They took some aspects of OS X and some aspects of Wii and mixed them together to make organizational changes, some good and some bad. However, the interface is very flat, drab and boring. There is no real glossy shine to anything, very little in textures for backdrops and windows fixtures and very anti-vista like when it comes down to drop shadows and beauty. A little more glamor, gloss and reflective surfaces would have made the interface look a bit more next-generation in terms of cool factor.

Overall, it is what it is. You may like it, hate it or just learn to live with it. Some features will be easier to browse around while others will require a bit more work. We’ve noticed about a 10 to 12 second pause between shopping screens for add-ons, arcade game downloads and such, hopefully that will change in the coming weeks. It stands out as a bit different from the competitors, in some aspects, while paying tribute to some of the cooler features of other products.

The Netflix addition is the best part of NXE, but that could have come available without a full user interface redesign. Your thoughts?

Guitar Hero World Tour Bundle MayhemGuitar Hero World Tour Bundle Mayhem

You’re looking to pickup a copy of Guitar Hero World Tour, but you’re currently unsure which bundle does what and how much each will cost. That has now been made clear and gamers can go about their holiday shopping business later this month (Oct. 26th) to pickup the bundle of their choosing.

  • USD $190 for the full band kit on PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.
  • USD $180 for the full band kit on PS2.
  • USD $100 for the guitar/game bundle on Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii.
  • USD $90 for the guitar/game bundle on PS2.

“And, if $190 just isn’t enough money to spend for you, Red Octane is also offering a special $240 deluxe full band kit bundle that also comes with an XL t-shirt, battery charger, key chain, and guitar case. This deluxe kit is available for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, with a $220 deluxe kit offered for the PlayStation 2 and Wii.” (1up)

One other thing that 1up observed in this pricing structure: Guitar Hero with guitar controller was $70, Guitar Hero II with controller was $80, Guitar Hero II on the Xbox 360 with controller was $90 and, of course, Guitar Hero III with controller was $100. Are we slowly being brought to the price point that these publishers want to reach? It seems they’re drawing us slowly to higher values as we continue to purchase into their schemes.

Granted, their schemes are fun as all heck so we’re willing to pay to play, but where will it end? Fairly soon we’ll be paying more money for our controller and rock genre style game than the console hardware with extended warranties.

PlayStation 3: Not About Quantity, About ProfitabilityPlayStation 3: Not About Quantity, About Profitability

The Xbox 360 price drop rumors flow like water and it’s all but officially been announced at this point. What about PlayStation 3 and their price? No.

Nobuyuki Oneda, the Sony’s chief financial officer said, “our plan is not to reduce the price. Our strategy is not to sell more quantity for PS3 but to concentrate on profitability.” (gamespot) This makes complete sense coming from their chief financial officer, as their motivation is to make money, not lose it.

The question remains, how will they actually make money if they’re no longer in the race for competitive market prices? Considering game licensing must Net them some amount of profit Sony’s idea seems to be the exact opposite of their original PlayStation method: saturate the market and sell them all games.

So far we’ve seen very few “need to have” games for the PlayStation 3 console while Xbox 360 continues to build a substantial library and Wii continues to break sales records for apparently no reason. When a game publisher has to decide on a platform to launch a new game, why would they choose the one that doesn’t care to be competitively priced in the market? The one that doesn’t care about quantity of sales?

Sony intends to reverse the entire razor blade philosophy where one sells a cheap razor and charges users for the blades over and over again. Their take on this concept is to sell really expensive razors and put out small half-quality blades. Is that a good market strategy at this point?