Tracey John from MTV Multiplayer writes:
"'Tis the season, so you might be planning or attending a holiday party sometime soon.
In fact, I'm trying to plan my own holiday party right now. And with several drum kits and guitars in my living room, there's no doubt my friends will want to bust them out.
But I wanted the party to fit the theme of the season. And while "Rock Band" now boasts over 500 tunes in its library, I didn't find any that are holiday-related. "Guitar Hero: World Tour" doesn't seem to have any either. There was a rock version of "We Three Kings" by Steve Ouimette that was released for free last December for "Guitar Hero III" but I don't have that, nor do I want it for just one instrument."
TheGamer Writes "Harmonix has proven plenty of times it can make Rock Band work without instruments."
I mean, yeah, but was anyone saying otherwise? The fact is people liked the plastic instruments rather than pressing buttons on a controller. They enjoyed the simulated experience.
"Work"? No, but to be good? It's absolutely necessary. Not having the accessories is like playing a lightgun shooter with an analog stick sure it works, but one experience is completely unique and fun as hell, and other is torture trying to make do playing in a way it was never meant to be played
I think CHEAP plastic instruments is THE reason why the instrument-genre ‘died’.
People invested in buying the game AND the peripherals, so the guitar, the dj-set, the drum, whatever, and the experience was absolutely fantastic. Great fun, great music, etc.
But then the instruments would break. A button would stop working, or your hits wouldn’t register, and that kind of hardware failure would end in you not being able to play the game as intended, and thus you not getting the scores you deserve.
So, now you had a great game, but a broken instrument, and nobody is gonna buy a new plastic instrument every 3-6 months in order to keep playing the game.
A solution would have been to release better quality instruments (obviously), at a slightly higher price, so you could have kept the new games coming and the genre alive, but sadly, that didn’t happen.
Bust a Groove, Gitaroo Man and Parrapa the Rappa were such good games. Neither needed any extra peripherals
IGN India says: “ Interior Night’s Charu Desodt on bringing Singstar to life on the PS2, winning a BAFTA, and upcoming Xbox Series X|S and PC game, As Dusk Falls.”
Player 2's long-form feature about kids and video games continues with a look at introducing toddlers to games for the first time.