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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Guitar Hero: HendrixGuitar Hero: Hendrix

As if the week of rumors hasn’t ended, Slash all but confirmed Hendrix as one of Activision Blizzard’s next big hit Guitar Hero games in Rolling Stone Magazine says GameSpot. During the interview with Slash he explained that even “Hendrix will have one” speaking to a stand alone Guitar Hero title.

While Slash isn’t exactly Activision Blizzard’s mouthpiece, he’s probably got a bit of inside information in the industry and probably might not have wanted to say it, but he did. What does that mean to us gamers? Well, for Hendrix fans it means a potential must have Guitar Hero title.

For a few of us, it means another game we’re not going to pickup. Mainly because Guitar Hero is a great franchise when it diversifies its artist across multiple genre’s and multiple artists. It’s hard to doubt the monetary success of putting out a single-artist title game if the artist is as epic and respect as Jimmy Hendrix; a few gamers would surely burn their plastic Guitar Hero guitar to get their hands on this.

This is only a rumor but it’s a pretty solid concept for a real game so we’ll see how it goes. Personally, I’d rather see a full Disturbed Guitar Hero title.

Has Rare Lost Touch With The Gaming Industry?Has Rare Lost Touch With The Gaming Industry?

In an interesting interview this week at 1up.com, Peter Moore, now at Electronic Arts, believes the skillset that Rare holds is a bit dated for our gaming industry. Moore, best known in his role of VP at Microsoft in their Interactive Entertainment Business division, understands how great Rare and their games once were but seems to believe the industry has passed them by.

Looking at their latest Microsoft titles, mainly Perfect Dark Zero, Viva Pinata and Kameo: Elements of Power, it’s not hard to believe his statements as fact. None of the titles have blown away a market full of Grand Theft Autos, Halo’s and other top selling titles. None of their games hit the epic review scores of Bioshock or Crysis. It’s not all first person shooters are taking the big sales numbers; Spore was given rave reviews by online review sites (sans Amazon) and that’s a completely different style of game.

Popcap’s Peggle has had more fame and glory than some of the bigger titles from Rare, probably made with less money. Is Rare a dying breed of developers with no good direction to react to the changing ways of the game industry?

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Episode 238: No Free PornEpisode 238: No Free Porn

This week’s episode is also abbreviated, as Jordan is somewhere in Pennsylvania looking for a gingerbread house while Paul is still trying to pack his entire NES library into a single suitcase. Jonah and Paul still got in enough time to do a Gaming Flashback on Thief: The Dark Project, and the following news items:

All this and Reader Feedback, too, as well as a new Question of the Week, “If you have the opportunity to read or view a highly anticipated game’s story months before it was released, would you do it or would you deliberately turn it away to preserve yourself from spoilers?” Let us know!