Cry moar, n00b. Activision has cancelled the whole Guitar Hero franchise. Harmonix, creator of its main competitor Rock Band, was sold off, and MTV Games closed entirely, a few months ago.
From Cracked: The 5 Most Absurd Video Games Starring Rock Stars. It starts with the Frankie Goes To Hollywood game and actually gets worse.
Charles Arthur from the Guardian nails music industry bollocks to a wall. The article is worth reading (the data was quite interesting to gather), but this chart shows the smoking gun:
Now, that’s journalism.
Today’s Penny Arcade.
It must be INTARWEB PIRATES, not games being set to outsell CDs and DVDs put together by next year. Not that I plan to start covering games in any way at all. Except maybe collecting versions of “Still Alive.”
Music is too fragmented for anti-DRM campaigns to do much. Games are much more hit-oriented. So Spore is having the crap beaten out of it on Amazon over DRM. Online activation required, after three activations you phone EA and wait on hold. That’s only if you actually pay for it rather than downloading a cracked copy. Piracy: The Better Choice™.
Cliff Harris from small game company Positech asked why people pirate his games. In what could be a shining example to anyone in music with a clue, he’s acted on the results — no DRM, better demos, lower price, slicker content. And no DRM. Also, no DRM. Who’da thunk?
I must have grown up in an era of instruments. When did music from ’80s home computers become a genre? With its own wikis and radio stations and pseudo-CDs? GIVE ME SOME BASS.
