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Rock Band Disc Export Title Update Goes LIve

Posted by Alex Lifschitz Categories: Downloadable Content, Electronic Arts, Music, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360,

Rejoice, ye fans of backwards compatibility! Harmonix has just released the title update for Rock Band that will allow players to export the first game’s song list into Rock Band 2 at their leisure. 55 of the songs are slated to have the ability to transfer over (“Run To The Hills”, “Paranoid”, and “Enter Sandman” are exempt) - you just pay 5 semolians, follow the instructions, and the songs are then burned to your HDD as any other DLC song would. Plus, you can also delete individual songs, if there are some you didn’t particularly care for. Personally, after being forced to play “In Bloom” into eternity during the first game, I’ll take that as a very welcome addition.

Rock Band is slated to have over 500 songs available for download and play by the year’s end, which is relatively unprecedented. Where they’re going from Rock Band 2 is anybody’s guess, but there have been some rumblings about a music creation system in the works (though Guitar Hero: World 2 seems to have that base covered already).

Harmonix Brings Guitar Hero to iPod, Sorta

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Accessories, Casual, Internet, Music,

Those of you lurking around the iTMS Games section may have noticed a recent addition for a Guitar Hero-esque iPod game named Phase: Your Music is the Game. The nice thing, though, is that this game isn’t just a rip-off of the GH formula, but a clever new game designed by the folks at Harmonix (and thus released by MTV/Viacom). One really cool feature of the game, as well, is that the rhythm action takes place to music you have stored on your iPod. Get it? Your music IS the game.

Phase is currently on sale for $4.99 at the iTunes Music Store.

Harmonix Co-Founder Answers Questions About Rock Band

Posted by Paul Hamilton Categories: Accessories, Downloadable Content, Features, Hardware, Microsoft, Music, PlayStation 3, Wireless, Xbox 360,

Rock Band Guitar Controller The Official Xbox Magazine’s podcast has an interview this week with Harmonix co-founder and president Alex Rigopulos about their upcoming game Rock Band. In the interview he talks about the game bundles, although light on concrete details he does confirm a band-in-a-box bundle that will include a guitar, drum kit and microphone. However, he goes on to say that the PlayStation 3 version will include a wireless guitar controller while the Xbox 360 version will have to include a wired guitar because Microsoft‘s wireless technology is too expensive to make the bundle reasonably priced. Since the 360 also has only two USB ports, the 360 Rock Band bundle will also be packed with a USB hub.

Rigopulos goes on to discuss the game’s career modes a little, saying there will be both solo career mode that progresses in a linear fashion similar to what Guitar Hero players are used to, but they are also including a less linear band career mode. In this mode you traverse to various venues trying to build up your fan base and in some cases return to previously played locations to maintain your fame there. Also it’s worth noting that the solo career mode will not include a bass career track so your options are vocals, guitar and drums in solo career mode. But Rigopulos did reveal that the finale songs for each career path (and therefore likely the difficulty distinctions throughout) will be different for each instrument, and he even said that at this point the drum finale will be The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Click to continue reading Harmonix Co-Founder Answers Questions About Rock Band

MTV to Invest $500 Million in Games Division

Posted by Steve Van Neil Categories: Corporate News, Culture, Music,

MTV logo Look no further for proof that the video game business is big business indeed. Media giant MTV has announced that it is sinking over a half billion dollars into the video game industry over the next two years.

“As we take our brands narrow and deep to serve our targeted, niche audiences, we’re putting well over $500 million behind building our games business across all of the brands in our portfolio,” explained MTV chairman and chief executive Judy McGrath.

MTV is set to make a big splash this fall when Rock Band is released. MTV/Viacom recently purchased Rock Band and Guitar Hero developer Harmonix, so the success of the game will greatly impact any of the network’s future gaming endeavors. In addition to the Harmonix acquisition, MTV/Viacom has snapped up Xfire and GameTrailers, quietly making itself a major player in the gaming scene.

Guitar Hero ‘80s Final Tracks Unveiled

Posted by Chris Pereira Categories: Activision, Music, PlayStation 2, Release Dates, Rumors, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Marketplace,

Guitar Hero II 80s Encore The list of songs that will appear in Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the ‘80s has been fully revealed with the announcement of the final eight, making for a total of 30 songs. Overall, the list isn’t terrible; it’s got a mixture of everything, from A Flock of Seagulls to The Vapors to Dio, but it just seems to be lacking any true flavor. It feels like a completely random selection of ‘80s songs, as opposed to, say, a really sweet group of ‘80s songs or one that captures a particular aspect of ‘80s music.. We still don’t have any official word on why Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy” disappeared after being seen in earlier builds of the game.

The game is set for release on PlayStation 2 on July 24 at a full retail price of $49.99. Nothing has been announced, but 360 Guitar Hero II owners might be seeing a downloadable content package (read: lots of microtransactions) later this year containing these songs.

The newly announced songs:

Anthrax’s “Caught In A Mosh”
Accept’s “Balls to the Wall”
Judas Priest’s “Electric Eye”
Dead Kennedy’s “Police Truck”
X’s “Los Angeles”
The Go Gos’ “We Got the Beat”
The Vapors’ “Turning Japanese”
Winger’s “Seventeen”
Limozeen’s “Because, it’s Midnite”

Click to continue reading Guitar Hero ‘80s Final Tracks Unveiled

EA Partners With MTV, Harmonix

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Electronic Arts, Music,

EA announced at the GDC that they would be publishing a new title from the MTV/Harmonix partnership. While Harmonix has been booted off of the Guitar Hero franchise with Activision’s acquisition of Red Octane, the next title from one of the big names in the music game genre is drawing a lot of attention. Unfortunately, aside from the detail that EA is publishing this next mystery game and that the parties involved believe that this is their most ambitious title to date. It may be hard to follow up the fantastic success of the the Guitar Hero games, but Harmonix may be the developer to do this.

Guitar Hero Moves To Neversoft

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Activision, Music,

GameDaily BIZ has discovered that the developer of the next Guitar Hero entry will be Neversoft, and not Harmonix. With Harmonix being acquired by MTV, and Activision’s acquisition of the Guitar Hero franchise and publishers Red Octane, gamers might have suspected that changes were in the works. Now, confirmation comes from Neversoft’s website, which is now seeking positions for both the Tony Hawk and the Guitar Hero franchises. Neversoft generally has developed strong titles, but the development of a Guitar Hero sequel will be a fairly large departure for the company; gamers might have reason to worry about the future of the franchise.

Everyone Wants a Piece of the Guitar Hero Pie

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Activision, Corporate News, Music, Party Games, PlayStation 2,

Kids love Guitar Hero
It’s been a crazy week for all things Guitar Hero related. While nothing seems able to stop the juggernaut that is Guitar Hero 2 from being released on time, some of the other news we’ve been seeing might be bad news for fans of the series. First off, MTV announced Monday that they’d be purchasing Harmonix, developer of the series, for $175 million dollars.

MTV had this to say about the acquisition:

The acquisition of Harmonix will deepen MTV’s connection to its audience via on-line, mobile and console music gaming, and expand the relationship with both labels and artists through the creation of games based on classic songs as well as future album releases.

If MTV’s responsible with this property, that could be good news. It sounds like we can expect Guitar Hero to be ported to a variety of systems. It also sounds like we’ll be “treated” to something like a micro-transaction-based system for downloading new content. Of course, there’s always more money to be made by charging $50.00 for hastily-made sequels, so we’ll have to wait and see how MTV treats their new baby.

In other news, you might not be able to play with that fancy wireless guitar in the future, at least if Red Octane has anything to say about it. On the 20th, Red Octane sued The Ant Commandos, the company that produces the wireless guitar controller “compatible with” (read: made for) Guitar Hero. Not one to take it lying down, TAC has countersued, saying that RedOctane is actually at fault and stole the design of the guitar controller during a tour of Topwave factory (Topwave is TAC’s parent company).

Harmonix must be having a field day with this - it’s got to be flattering to produce a game so popular that EVERYONE wants in on the action. Now please guys, can we all just get along so that we can start rocking out again? Please, think of the children…

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