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Forbes Magazine calls Rock Band “Shameless Knockoff” of Guitar Hero, Alex Rigopulos’ Head Asplodes
Posted by Alex Lifschitz Categories: Activision, Corporate News, Culture, Electronic Arts, Music,
Hay fanboys, listen up! And before you read anything, the following was from FORBES, not Bobby Kotick, for the sake of Rock Band/Guitar Hero wars everywhere.
In a recent profile of Activision CEO and industry provocateur Bobby Kotick, Forbes decided to talk about a number of Activision bread and butter franchises, such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (whose empty, frail husk now litters that halls of Activision, milked clean of its sweet, sweet nectar). Somewhere around the end, though, is an interesting little snippet of text:
“EA also teamed with MTV to sell Rock Band, a shameless knockoff of Guitar Hero that added drums, bass and a microphone to the world of make-believe rock stars. EA says it is returning to an “auteur model” of designing games, taking bigger chances on fewer ideas.”
Look, we should all see this kind of writing for what it really is: Unresearched and inflammatory. Even if you didn’t know that the Rock Band guys are the guys who made Guitar Hero in the first place, it’s a wee bit unprofessional to take sides. I’ve worked for Activision, and they’ve said some crazy things regarding the music game timeline, but don’t confuse the quote as coming from Kotick.
Funny how they don’t mention Guitar Hero: World Tour anywhere.
Read More | Forbes
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The TV Viewers’ Bill of Rights
Posted by David L. Williams Categories: Drama, Reality, Editorial, Features,
Lots of people watch television. That may seem like an obvious statement (especially to somebody reading a site called TV Envy), but I think we viewers tend to forget how strong of a lobby we are. “Cane,” for example, had a little more than 11 million viewers for its first episode, a number that most newspapers called good but not great. But if a movie had 11 million people go see it in one night, it would have grossed somewhere around $90 million dollars.
That’s $90 million dollars in one day. That’s a big fat, Spiderman-Harry Potter-Transformin’ hit.
And yes, I know, movies aren’t TV. TV is free (mostly), and you don’t have to leave your home to watch TV, but it’s still a pretty frickin’ big audience. And that was just for one show, while there were two other broadcast networks (and hundreds of cable channels) competing against it. And “Cane,” by the way, wasn’t even the most watched show in that time slow. That was “Law & Order: SVU” (and more about that in a little bit.)
So … you would think that with such a big audience, such a mighty and powerful audience, the people who are making television would do what they can to not make us angry. And they do, to some extent. But they think “not making us angry” is the same as “not putting anything slightly controversial” on television, forgetting that all of us watched shows like “The Sopranos,” “Sex and the City,” “Nip/Tuck,” and even “Seinfeld, which I’ll remind you had episodes that got humor out of killing George’s fiancée and a contest to see who could refrain the longest from self-pleasure.
Ignoring that, though, what they’ve done to make me and a lot of the television-watching population angry is treating us like we are stupid. Here’s the thing, television networks: we’re really smart. I know, I know, some of us still watch “Two and a Half Men” and “According to Jim,” but even more of us don’t. We follow the intricate plots of “Lost,” we laugh at the cringe-inducing humor of “The Office,” we delight in the brilliant references, call-backs and jokes of 30 Rock, we even find a way to separate the good reality shows (The Amazing Race & Survivor) from the horrible ones (Pirate Master & The Bachelor).
In short, we’re smart. We’re very smart and we’d like to be treated properly. So I propose a TV Viewers’ Bill of Rights. Bills of rights, be they for airline passengers, internet users, or consumers, are very popular these days. (Ironically, the actual, original Bill of Rights? Not so popular right now. Or enforced, really.) Here goes…
Click to continue reading The TV Viewers’ Bill of Rights
Top Ten: Halo 2 for Vista Improvements
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Editorial, Features, Microsoft, Software, Video Games,
So, Halo 2 for Windows Vista is launching on May 8, 2007, and we have been able to spend some time reviewing the title. Since everyone is familiar with Halo 2, we felt a full review wasn’t in order. Instead, we wanted to clue you in on the ten best improvements we experienced while reviewing the game. These ten features raise the bar for Halo as a whole, and may be a foreshadowing of things to come in Halo 3:
Achievements: If you are looking for something fun that adds another level of fun and challenge to the Halo 2 world, this is it. We have said it before, and we will say it again - Microsoft hit a gold mine with the notion of achievements. No sooner than when we finished a multiplayer deathmatch did we rack up a total of three achievements. Meleeing five people from behind (and thusly earning the Ninja achievement) was nice, but Meleeing someone who already had the Ninja achievement (and thus earning the Flaming Ninja achievement) was even better. We have the achievement to prove it. For those wondering, yes, the achievements you earn in Halo 2 for Vista (or any other Games for Windows game) is counted towards your Xbox Gamerscore.
Continue Reading: Top Ten Halo 2 Vista Improvements…
Read More | Playfeed
Top Ten Improvements in Halo 2 for Windows Vista
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Action, Editorial, Features, First Person Shooters, PC, Xbox 360, Xbox Live,
So, Halo 2 for Windows Vista is launching on May 8, 2007, and we have been able to spend some time reviewing the title. Since everyone is familiar with Halo 2, we felt a full review wasn’t in order. Instead, we wanted to clue you in on the ten best improvements we experienced while reviewing the game. These ten features raise the bar for Halo as a whole, and may be a foreshadowing of things to come in Halo 3:
Achievements: If you are looking for something fun that adds another level of fun and challenge to the Halo 2 world, this is it. We have said it before, and we will say it again - Microsoft hit a gold mine with the notion of achievements. No sooner than when we finished a multiplayer deathmatch did we rack up a total of three achievements. Meleeing five people from behind (and thusly earning the Ninja achievement) was nice, but Meleeing someone who already had the Ninja achievement (and thus earning the Flaming Ninja achievement) was even better. We have the achievement to prove it. For those wondering, yes, the achievements you earn in Halo 2 for Vista (or any other Games for Windows game) is counted towards your Xbox Gamerscore.
Click to continue reading Top Ten Improvements in Halo 2 for Windows Vista
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