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Guitar’d Hero – Downloadable song packs sell like lightning

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Guitar Hero 2 on the 360 is making Activision loads of cash monies thanks to its downloadable content.

This is interesting on several levels. For one, I find it curious that people are gobbling up these song packs when all but one of them feature tracks from Guitar Hero 1. If you haven’t played GH1, then the packs are a no-brainer, but I personally will never play Smoke on the Water again after five staring it (great song to hear, boring as fuck to play through to the end).

Of course the news is outraging the Kids of the Internet (uh-woo-oh), who are quick to call us “Sheep” for buying these packs at a high price point. Aside from the fact that I haven’t actually bought them myself, I’m still cringing at this nerd rage. As I posted in the Kotaku comments section, let us break down the prices, a common tradition among gamers:

iTunes – 99 cents for a DRM’ed music track that someone just had to upload to a server

Guitar Hero track – roughly two dollars for a DRM’ed music track with not one but two notecharts, that someone had to upload to a server. →  Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this post!

Fishing for Quarters – Remembering arcades

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Being a kid of the Eighties and Nineties, I spent a ton of time feeding quarters into arcade games. We at videolamer may rain praise upon our little console buddies but we rarely talk about their much larger, and these days dumber, brothers, the arcade machines. If it were not for these coin-gobbling behemoths, consoles would not exist. There would be no Pac-Man to munch on stuff, missiles to command, or Tron…to do whatever it is that Tron does.

We owe a lot to these big guys and sadly, like all overly-huge things such as woolly mammoths, dinosaurs, Sony, the RIAA, and The Ultimate Warrior, they are becoming extinct. Not many people visit arcades these days, and for good reason. What was once a bustling, multi-genre industry has deteriorated into a handful of companies making fighting games, shooting games, racing games, and beat games. Consider this my tribute to a more innocent and carefree time.

All of my life I have liked video games. →  NiGHTS into REaDS

Breaking News: Big Japanese publisher to release crappy games on Wii

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According to Screen Digest, one major Japanese third party publisher said, “We’re running a business, not to win awards but to make money — if we make breakeven plus on Wii then we are happy.” This translates to “We will port a lot of PS2 games to the Wii and develop real games for other consoles. The neutrality of Screen Digest has been disputed on some popular gaming forums, but assuming this quote is accurate, it still boggles my mind.

I was an economics minor and want to pretend my parents 120k were well spent, so please roll with this haphazard attempt at a proof:

First, we must necessarily assume that profit comes first because the quote indicates this is true. This rules out the idea that 3rd party publishers are saving their big games for HD and fancy processors simply because the developers want to work on them. Pet projects and artistic babies don’t fit into this business mindset, so for any AAA title on the PS3 or 360 we should assume the publisher expects to make a profit. →  2 h4rdc0r3 4 U.

Kotaku and Sony Agreed to Disagree

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I’m sure you’ve all heard the huge controversy surrounding the rumor reported by Kotaku on the whole “Playstation Home” thing, so I’ll just give you the short story.

Basically, Kotaku searched the Internets, came across a rumor about something called the “Playstation Home”, and posted it for their fellow readers, which is what any good news service would have done. Sony apparently didn’t want the rumor posted, as it seems it may be something that’s going to be unveiled at this week’s GDC Conference in San Francisco, California. Kotaku defended the post, saying it signifies what journalism really is and that it is not a place for PR dribble (amen to that). Sony then blackballed Kotaku, banning them from any future Sony related event and asking for their PS3 dev kit back.

With all the negative press that Sony has had in the last few months, this was probably the worst thing the hardware giant could have done. They’ve just alienated themselves with a lot of the hardcore gamers with this action. →  Sid Meier’s Alpha Centarticle

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 9.22.06

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RedOctane sues TAC who in turn sue RedOctane
Guitar Hero makers RedOctane have filed a lawsuit against TAC for making guitar controllers that resemble their own. In response, TAC has sued RedOctane, claiming they’ve been making guitar controllers longer and that RedOctane is actually infringing on their copyright. Whether or not this sue the suer move is just standard stupid legal strategy remains to be seen. Personally, I’d find it hilarious if RedOctane loses.

Nintendo wants violent sexy games
Nintendo of America is courting mature content for the Wii. This is no doubt a good business strategy, but it still doesn’t sit totally right. However evil they were as a corporation, I always had a little respect for their slightly patronizing desire to protect us from unseemly content. Nintendo was the catcher in the rye. Or, to put it a more asinine way, they were like that grandfather you have that once committed unspeakable atrocities in a war but now goes out of his way to protect you from the harshness of reality, despite the fact that you’re 36. →  Shining Post: Legacy of Great intention

Where to sell your classic games

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Today while looking for a deal to trade in my old DS for a new pink one (it matches my nail polish) I came across the tremendous SellVideoGames.com. The site is run by BRE Software and is an amazing deal for anyone interested in trading in their old classics. And by amazing, I mean they are taking advantage of anyone stupid enough to take them seriously.

Looking through their trade in prices for Saturn games left me speechless. $6 for Bomberman when on eBay you could get five times that price. $7.10 for Dragon Force instead of around $50 on eBay and $8.20 for Guardian Heroes instead of about $60 on eBay. Surprisingly, Suikoden 2 nets you $48.11 from BRE Software. This is a tad shy of the over $100 eBay would yield, but I expected worse. At least they only buy Snatcher for $6.30.

Not only does BRE Software offer insultingly low trade in prices, they seem to lack an understanding of supply and demand. →  Do the math.

Polarity

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Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

If you ever asked yourself why video games were invented, you probably answered that the original creators just wanted to have fun. And, in fact, you’d be correct. The very first video game was created in 1958 by a scientist named William Higinbotham to let people have a little bit of fun at a science fair in Long Island, NY. The fair was mostly centered on nuclear theories and revelations, but Higinbotham thought it made the exhibit a bit scary for the general public, so he made what is now known to be the very first video game: Tennis for Two.

Suffice to say, it was a hit at the show. People were amazed that they could control something on a screen (which was actually a 3-inch radar screen). After the exhibit ended, however, Higinbotham broke the machine down and never really thought he was onto something special. However, the video game industry that we have today was born out of something completely different: greed. →  Are you ready for some readball?

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Top 100 best American sellers list analysis

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Next Gen was good enough to make a comprehensive list of the top 100 games of this century by American sales. The list proves supremely useful because they included the average Game Ranking review. Clicking back and forth between the pages and going over what fell where and what didn’t make the list in my mind, I realized that the list could be sorted in every which way. So, I opened Excel, threw some numbers in and it popped out a few graphs.

Some highlights:
1. Ninja Gaiden
2. Bulletproof
3. Virtua Fighter 4
4. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
5. SSX 3
6. Tetris Worlds
7. Soul Calibur 2
8. Burnout 3
9. Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists of the Roses
10. God of War
11. Devil May Cry
12. Knights of the old Republic
13. Metroid Prime
14. Jack and Daxter
15. Metal Gear Solid 2
16. Wind Waker
17. Need for Speed Underground
18. Halo

Some observations – Virtua Fighter 4 and Soul Calibur 2 were both outsold by Mortal Kombat despite being better to anyone with taste. →  Now with fewer vowels.

A guide to selling extra content

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Microsoft and Oblivion have shown the world that gamers will actually buy discreet bits of additional content for their favorite games. Designing a method that allows a game to create a constant stream of revenue is ingenious, and now that the groundwork has been laid for us all we need to do to take advantage of this lucrative business opportunity is jump on the bandwagon. So then the question is not how do we set up a system that continually milks our fans, but rather what exactly do we use to separate them from their money; what content can we sell and to whom?

Any mildly proactive person can see that things like weapons, armor, and other gear can be sold to players for additional fees. This is exactly what has happened in the game Oblivion. But this kind of rigid thinking will not allow us to maximize profits. We need to push the envelope to capitalize on all market segments. →  Nobody puts article in a corner.

The videolamer Guide to In-Game Advertising

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Video games are an exciting new medium, primarily because of the potential for huge profits. These profits won’t just fall into our laps, though. Video games are unlike other media, and as such we cannot rely on the same tired marketing tactics. An annoying tagline like “can you hear me now?” may work on TV, but that’s because TV viewers are morons. The gamer is slightly more clever and we must treat him as such. Because most marketing is aimed at stupid people, most ad agencies will not have the know how to target a gaming audience. This guide, specifically tailored to the advertising needs of the video game advert, will lead you step by step to your ultimate goal: Take money from the ignorant.

1. Target your demographic

An ad, no matter how clever and well thought out, will not make an impact if it is seen by the wrong audience. Advertising ring pops to the elderly is simply a waste of resources. →  All happy games are alike; each unhappy game is unhappy in its own way.

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