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    Guitar Hero, Rock Band sales slide reminiscent of DDR

    July 22, 2009 - 7:00pm


    Before Guitar Hero and Rock Band was another phenomenon of the music gaming genre: Dance Dance Revolution. Konami's "dancing" game bundled a peripheral and captured the media's attention with its kinetic "exergaming" play. Over the years, the franchise has dwindled in relevance, as gamers got tired of stomping their feet to moving arrows. Each iteration of the series brought new songs, but the gameplay turned stale, and gamers eventually put their peripherals in the closet.The same might be happening to the current slate of music games. NPD reports (via Gamasutra) that revenue for the Guitar Hero franchise have dropped 34% year over year. Even worse, the Rock Band franchise has dropped 67%. (Although, it should be noted that the Rock Band series has not had a major console release this year.)Jesse Divnich of EEDAR argues that "the music and rhythm genre is being monetized more closely in terms of a pop-culture fad," which explains the increasing number of releases we see from the Guitar Hero franchise. He argues that the window of opportunity for making money is limited and that both Activision and MTV Games are "[striking] when the iron is hot." The upcoming The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 may make a big splash this holiday season, but it might not be long until gamers put away the plastic instruments and look for the next big thing.Source - Analysis: Guitar Hero / Rock Band retail sales down by halfSource - The Divnich Debrief: Roadblocks in the Music Genre

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    Japan gets first DQ IX 'Story Quest' DLC July 24

    July 22, 2009 - 6:45pm

    Andriasang.com reports that Japan will receive the first "Story Quest" DLC for Dragon Quest IX this Friday, July 24. While there aren't specific details as to what a Story Quest actually is, it certainly sounds fairly self-explanatory. The DLC is entitled "Rikka's Dream Treasure" and tasks players with snagging a specific treasure map for Rikka the innkeeper. Andria Sang notes that treasure maps are distributed randomly, which could make the quest a bit more difficult than it sounds.Another standard quest will also be available, "Wonderful Birthday," in which a character is searching for an item available on the Dragon Quest IX Wi-Fi shopping system. So, we guess you have to buy someone something? Doesn't seem like much of a quest, really.Still, if you've already cleared Dragon Quest IX -- which is actually a requirement for playing the DLC -- you're probably ready for more.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Nintendo: Game market could grow another 50 percent

    July 22, 2009 - 6:30pm

    Nintendo of America's senior director of product development, Tom Prata, discussed some market research done by the company at Seattle's Casual Connect conference.In the last 2.5 years, Prata explained, the current gamer audience in North America has grown by around 30 million people to about 143.7 million. Hey, that's just about the period of time that the Wii's been out! What a bizarre coincidence. Prata said that the number of active console and handheld gamers worldwide is around 295 million, and could grow by another 150 million "if the right game came along." Had it been E3, a trailer for Nintendo's latest surprise game would have started up at that point. One game to trigger the adoption of 150 million new gamers -- that's quite the challenge. Such a game would have to be significantly more popular than Wii Fit.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Another 24 songs confirmed for Guitar Hero 5, more features demo'd

    July 22, 2009 - 5:30pm

    70 of the 85 tracks that'll come on the Guitar Hero 5 retail disc have been officially announced, and it's looking like our original complete track listing -- though still technically unofficial -- is so totally the real deal. Activision notes in this update that AFI's "Medicate," from its forthcoming album Crash Love, is exclusive to GH5, as is a new recording of Public Enemy's "Bring The Noise" in collaboration with guitarist and known Ozzy Osborne associate Zakk Wylde.Oh yeah, about that video above. It ostensibly contains footage of more new features in GH5, specifically "star power overflow," "band moments" and the ability to resurrect band mates who've failed out. With everything that's happening on-screen, though, spotting these features in action is kind of a game in and of itself. Good luck with that. We can assure you that finding the newly confirmed tracks after the break is much easier.

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    Here's your first look at Iron Man 2 in action

    July 22, 2009 - 5:15pm

    There, that was the first trailer for Iron Man 2. Now, here's a brief history lesson, courtesy of "Iron Man's new trailer looks unexpectedly awesome":"We know, we know, it's just a video clip. And yes, we know that we've been burned by sexy trailers for mediocre licensed games before. But this new trailer for Iron Man (shown during last night's Spike VGAs) is just so freaking good, we're finding it hard to keep our cynical composure.How about when Iron Man throws a fighter jet, or when it grabs a missile and redirects it? How about the original gray armor? Awesome. Everything here is."Never, ever forget this lesson: You can believe what we're saying 99.9% of the time. But when it comes to pretending to be a man in a robot suit, we are frail, weak, and, above all, not to be trusted.Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Scribblenauts to stump brains, warm hearts September 15

    July 22, 2009 - 5:00pm


    5th Cell's wunderkind Scribblenauts has finally been given a US release date: September 15. After having the time of our life with the game back at E3, we're anxious to get through the next two months to play it. If only we had some kind of time-traveling device and, perhaps, a robotic dinosaur that could defend us on our jaunt into the future. Oh well ...
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    Band Hero DS includes a 'drum skin'

    July 22, 2009 - 4:30pm

    Activision just announced the launch of the Band Hero site, with a contest whose prizes include both a console Band Hero bundle and a DS Band Hero bundle. The official rules for the contest reveal a bit more about the DS offering (which isn't hard, since we've previously known nothing at all about it). Predictably, the Band Hero DS Lite Band Kit includes the Guitar Grip peripheral included in previous Guitar Hero On Tour games. However, it also includes a "drum skin" peripheral. We ... can't imagine how that would work on the DS (does it sit on top of the touch screen?) so we've emailed Activision for more details. Band Hero wouldn't be the first DS game to simulate drumming, but we don't know how it would work with a peripheral.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Unseen64: Backbone made Mirror's Edge demo for Wii, PSP, DS

    July 22, 2009 - 4:00pm


    We love our Mirror's Edge as much as the next group of guys, but we don't really know what to make of this one. Unseen64 reports that Backbone Entertainment was asked by EA to make a demo for the game on Wii, DS and PSP, though the status of it is currently unknown.Judging by the couple of pieces of concept art Unseen64 is sporting, the project looks suspiciously third-person, which is puzzling at best. But who knows? Maybe we're just old men set in our crotchety ways. Maybe it could have been awesome. But with less-than-stellar sales numbers for the flagship, we're doubtful EA will be willing to spend the cash to let Faith leap onto other boxes.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    Latest Pokemon movie sets Guinness World Record

    July 22, 2009 - 3:45pm


    Japan recently received its 12th Pokémon animated feature in Arceus: To The Conquering of Space-Time. Even before its July 18 release, the film showed that the power of Pokemans is still strong in Japan by shattering records. The Escapist reports that pre-sales of tickets were at insane levels, with 2,384,198 eager movie-goers signing up, enough to net it a Guinness World Record for most advanced sales of an animated feature. Heck, not even that many people bought Pokémon Platinum when it released!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

    2D Boy's Gabler clarifies next project

    July 22, 2009 - 3:15pm


    2D Boy's Kyle Gabler tells Joystiq that the current project he's working on with Henry Hatsworth creator Kyle Gray and World of Goo programmer Allan Blomquist is not the next game from 2D Boy. Following up on yesterday's confusing reports on the new game, Gabler told us that he and 2D Boy co-founder Ron Carmel don't want to prematurely announce their next project, which he believes will have huge expectations following the plaudits plopped on World of Goo.Gabler explained the game he's working on with Gray and Blomquist isn't a 2D Boy or EA title, and he later sent us a link which goes into more detail on the Experimental Gameplay Project website. The game he's working on with the "EGP guys" will be high quality, though only a couple of hours long.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments