Guitar Hero Challenges iTunes Store for Music Sales

Activision is aiming to create an alternative music store to iTunes.

Apple might be expanding its iPhone into gaming, but the Guitar Hero franchise is gunning for iTunes' music business.

Bobby Kotick, Chief Executive Officer of Activision, intends to extend the Guitar Hero games into a music platform similar to the system promised by Rock Band studio Harmonix.

Kotick considers this move "the natural evolution" of Activision's music series.

He continued, "I don't think there have been a lot of credible alternatives to iTunes, but Guitar Hero certainly has that potential."

In order to compete with a well-established store like iTunes, Activision will utilize its merger with Vivendi to access its subsidiary Universal Music and its international payment processes in "virtually every country," explained Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Levy.

"We have a strong presence in Asia, and when you combine the two companies there are going to be opportunities to grow, particularly in Europe," added Levy.

With Vivendi's vast entertainment empire, Kotick concluded, "These are all the things that enable you to be a successful competitor (to iTunes)."

Source: MSN

Permalink

... but can I take your music with me and listen to it on the bus?

What are you supposed to do when you get onto a bus and you want to listen to music whip out a gaming console, a TV, and a power supply I would rather listen to an I-Pod rather than trying to lug around at least fifty pounds of equipment just to play a song to listen to it.

It's a ridiculous notion really. It's big words and nothing else, and here's why:

1) Not all songs have parts for voice, bass, guitar and mic. Even if you just restrict it to the instruments that are present (which sort of detracts from the whole point of the game) there are plenty of bits of music that don't have any of the above, in any do-able sense. So for a START your pool of possible tracks is much smaller.

2) Even ignoring that, how many songs are on iTunes? The website says 6 million. Six. Million. That's the scope of iTunes. Are Activision seriously suggesting they are going to rival that when, for each song, they need to obtain masters, pick them apart and create note-charts for each part, then go through testing to see that everything works as it should. Perhaps just as importantly, do they really expect to do that and maintain any level of quality?

I think the general point is that not all songs work with this sort of game, and even then you don't just obtain the rights to the song and then it pops fully formed into the game. Each song requires work done on it, every note needs to be inspected and charted, and this needs to be done for all instruments on every level of difficulty.

Not to mention that by the time guitar hero 2 is released Harmonix would already have a 300ish song headstart to boast about with a promise of 500 songs by the end of the year.

I don't see any possible realistic way to accomplish this....right now. Yes, it's a 'pretty' thing to envision, but the praticality of it all just seems really far-fetched.

Mr. Kotick really needs to define his statements much clearer with a believable exmaple that the gaming community can process and digest and rally behind. This all encompassing statements are nutty and used more so for a nice sound byte or a way of keeping your name/product in the news.

The biggest issue I have (and I all know I'll get flamed for saying this again), is the limited scope of genre's these rythym games have right now. Yes, I know it's called 'Rock Band' and 'Guitar Hero' for a reason, but does that mean 90% of all the songs have to be of the relatively same genre's?

You limit the credibility of this whole notion if you immediately discount country, folk, reggae, and countless other styles of music and limit your library to only songs that emphasize 'guitar' riffs that Activsion & Harmonix only believe comes from classic rock/hair bands/heavy/thrash/punk.

A well-notioned pipe-dream. They don't seem to realize that everyone who likes music doesn't have to like Guitar Hero.

Secondly, if they're making the songs for GH play (article seems fairly ambiguous here) how many people are seriously going to pay for them when they can already do it for free?

I don't think that has been reported accurately. what I've read online says that GHIV will have the ability to create songs, as it's being expanded like Rock Band. The sweetner to entice back people who have gone to RB is that you can share them online via something a bit like ITunes.

That would make a bit more sense than what the article is implying

From what I am reading, they want to create a music store a la iTunes in which instead of downloading to a computer, guitar hero will implement a place where gamers can listen to their downloaded music. If that is what they are talking about, then:

A) they are ripping off Rock Band yet again, as Harmonix has already stated that they are going to have a feature where the player can just listen to the tracks they downloaded or are on the discs

B) Why would I want to buy songs to listen to only on my console versus iTunes where I can put it on my iPod and take it wherever I want?

Clearly more thought needs to be put into the system before they can credibly challenge iTunes.

EDIT: This is ONLY music, and not playable tracks from what I am gathering

Alone Disciple:
I don't see any possible realistic way to accomplish this....right now. Yes, it's a 'pretty' thing to envision, but the praticality of it all just seems really far-fetched.

Mr. Kotick really needs to define his statements much clearer with a believable exmaple that the gaming community can process and digest and rally behind. This all encompassing statements are nutty and used more so for a nice sound byte or a way of keeping your name/product in the news.

The biggest issue I have (and I all know I'll get flamed for saying this again), is the limited scope of genre's these rythym games have right now. Yes, I know it's called 'Rock Band' and 'Guitar Hero' for a reason, but does that mean 90% of all the songs have to be of the relatively same genre's?

You limit the credibility of this whole notion if you immediately discount country, folk, reggae, and countless other styles of music and limit your library to only songs that emphasize 'guitar' riffs that Activsion & Harmonix only believe comes from classic rock/hair bands/heavy/thrash/punk.

Check out the track listing for Rock Band II. Leave Guitar Hero 4's alone, because that really is just more of the same.

Besides, there's been rhythm games in the past which have experienced in different genres: From Frequency to Parappa the Rapper. The problem? They were too abstract and the niche too small. Maybe you should check those out, though.

EDIT: Although, the hardest song on Rock Band was a country/folk song.