Reports of faulty guitars have lighted up the gaming world. Chalk it up to the squeaky wheels (or in this case, squeaky strum bars) being the ones to post fervently online, but know of three "Rock Band" guitars personally that are not functioning properly. From talking to friends who own the game and a source we spoke to on the phone today for a story about "Rock Band," problems are emerging: either the strum bar doesn't register the notes you're playing, registers them too often, or the "Overdrive" tilt mechanism doesn't work at all.
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
Player 2's long-form feature about kids and video games continues with a look at introducing toddlers to games for the first time.
Music rhythm games dominated the video game market in the mid-2000s. Unfortunately, the genre would fall from grace shortly after finding success.
More like faded away than failed. Failed implies it was new and didnt take off... that is not the case. Rhythm games were hugely popular but the lights dimmed and the show is over.
You would think the current situation would cause a resurgence but im actually seeing more people picking up real instruments and learning to play. My son is one who started out on GH and now he plays real guitar.
I lost interest when they stopped allowing you to use the controller to play with, just couldn't get into playing with the guitar.
Not the sole reason, but over saturation by Activision releasing 5 GH games in one year, charging full price for all of them while only Metallica and GH5 were worth it.
I dont think these games failed at all. People aren't going to keep buying games and peripherals over and over. All songs need to work on either rockband or guitar hero thru updates. Guitar hero live was actually good but rockband with all its songs and same equipment killed it.
I'm sure part of the reason they faded away, at least over the long term, was that you couldn't download them digitally.
Harmonix games were doing great. Both of their Guitar Heros were perfect. What happened between Guitar Hero 2 and Rock Band? EA entered the ring!!
Seriously, it's not like EA can't port or makes bad PS3 games, they screw up wherever and whenever they can.
Lets pray EA doesn't have the same effect on Bioware...
I didn't even notice there was a problem with my Rock Band guitar, because I was enjoying the wireless freedom of my GH3 guitar WITH Rock Band. I plugged in the Rock Band version, and it works... except for the "overdrive" tilting thingee... it works 90% of the time. I have three guitars now, GH2, GH3, and Rock Band, so it shouldn't be a real issue when I send the Rock Band one in.
I am still glad I bought this game.
My Fender Strat activates Star power...err...Overdrive by itself.