livin' fat
daily dos
wed 4/22/2009
The makers of Rock Band have announced a new version of the popular video game designed for 'tweens: Lego Rock Band.
Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero
versus
tue 11/11/2008
| name | Rock Band. | Guitar Hero. |
| release date | November 20, 2007. | November 8, 2005. |
| debuted on | Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and Playstation 2. | Playstation 2. |
| originally developed by | Harmonix Music Systems. | Harmonix Music Systems/Red Octane. |
| designers | Greg LoPiccolo, Chris Canfield, Rob Kay and Dan Teasdale. | Mary Magdilen, Ryan Lesser, Rob Kay and Josh Randall. |
| genre | Music and rhythm game. | Music and rhythm game. |
| inspiration | Guitar Hero, DrumMania and karaoke. | Konami arcade game Guitar Freaks and Gitaroo Man. |
| gameplay | Pressing and hitting buttons and pads in game controllers in order to sync musical notes and complete songs without too many mistakes. | Pressing buttons on a game controller in order to synch musical notes and complete songs without too many mistakes. |
| game controls and peripherals | Plastic controllers that look like guitar, drums plus a microphone. | Plastic controller that looks like a guitar. World Tour now includes drums and a microphone. |
| the kids love | Paramore's crushcrushcrush, Fall Out Boy's Dead on Arrival and Coheed and Cambria's Welcome Home. | Tokio Hotel's Monsoon, Rise Against's Re-Education (Through Labor) and Bullet For My Valentine's Scream Aim Fire. |
| old folks love | Metallica's Enter Sandman, Blue Oyster Cult's (Don't Fear) The Reaper and David Bowie's Suffragette City. | Black Sabbath's Iron Man, Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water and The Ramone's I Wanna Be Sedated. |
| revived the careers of | Guns N' Roses. | Metallica. |
| the critics | Gamespot: "Rock Band is every wannabe musician's dream. [It's] a guaranteed good time for any music lover, and one of the best party games you'll ever play." | The Onion AV Club: "An epic rock masterpiece that may be the most purely fun game out there. Every single minute is great." |
| how to play it better | Teamwork and practice. | Time and practice. |
| sequels | Rock Band 2. | Guitar Hero 2 and Guitar Hero 3, World Tour, Rocks The 80's, etc. |
| juice | A Beatles-themed version of the game is in the works. | World Tour ads feature celebrities like Kobe Bryant, Michael Phelps, Alex Rodriguez and Tony Hawk. |
| as seen on | Rock Band TV Show. | South Park. |
| awards | Best Music Game by IGN and The Academy of Interactive Ats & Sciences' Family Game of the Year. | Best Music Game by IGN in 2005 and Excellence in Audio and Game Innovation by The Game Developer's Choice Awards. |
| sales | 600 million dollars in retail sales. | 1.6 billion dollars combined in retail sales. |
like hotcakes
daily dos
tue 7/15/2008
Interpol, Linkin Park and Rage Against the Machine are among the bands featured in the new 84-song tracklist from the forthcoming video game Rock Band 2.
still ill
daily dos
fri 5/30/2008
Check out video footage of Tony Hawk playing a demo of Guitar Hero's answer to Rock Band: Guitar Hero on Tour. (via Kotaku)
Downward spiral for music sales in 2007
the music press
tue 1/8/2008
- "2007 was not a good year for Latin music," writes Billboard, pinpointing that "the top-selling Latin album so far, Daddy Yankee's El Cartel: The Big Boss , had sold 248,000 copies as of December 2. In contrast, his Barrio Fino En Directo, the top-selling album of 2006, had sold 484,000 by year's end." The industry insider adds: "Aside from Mana ... and Juanes ... all the other acts to hit the [100k sales] mark have had sales histories more lucrative than this year's numbers reflect."
- The upturn in digital downloads has cushioned the blow, with Reuters underscoring that 477,000 units sold in 2007 "far exceeds the 293,000 digital album sales tallied for Latin music in 2006." It attributes the boost to "iTunes Latino's solidified status as a destination for a vast, well-catalogued library of music and by the proliferation of videos by Latin acts now found on YouTube. Ringtones and master ringtones are also growing sources of revenue for Latin labels."
- It's not just Latin music that is hurting, with Forbes magazine reporting that "[d]ouble-digit percentage sales declines were registered in most categories of music, including rock (12.5%), R&B (18.3%), alternative (19.2%), metal (13.9%), Christian/gospel (14.3%) and jazz (10.6%)." "[H]ip-hop has been hit particularly hard," writes the New York Times. "This was the year when the gleaming hip-hop machine — the one that minted a long string of big-name stars, from Snoop Dogg to OutKast — finally broke down, leaving rappers no alternative but to work harder, and for fewer rewards."
- For some acts, it's not all doom and gloom — Kanye West's Graduation went double platinum. Josh Groban's Noel sold 3.5 million units, giving the ailing his record company a much needed shot in the arm and making him "the rare person in the music industry singing a happy jolly tune this holiday season," according to Variety.com. Video games like Guitar Hero, Sing Star and Rock Band have also provided the ailing music industry with a small chunk of 10.5 billion dollars in sales, writes PC World: "2007 was a great year for the video game industry, driven largely by the rising popularity of music-based titles."
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