Open Thread and Mini-Posts
December 3rd, 2007Just thought I’d comment on a few news pieces from the last few days:
- Is it a little strange to anyone else that there is new downloadable content for Guitar Hero II (yes, 2)? It would make slightly more sense to me if it were cross-compatible with or at least simultaneously released with similar Guitar Hero III content, but for now this seems to be the same to me as if Bungie were to release downloadable content for Halo 2 now. What’s sort of interesting is that I can’t seem to find any information on who actually developed the new content, since Harmonix was the original creator of Guitar Hero II, but Activision now owns the property. Was this new content developed by Neversoft, or perhaps it was completed long ago by Harmonix and they are simply releasing the rest of the GHII content under some contract? Either way, it seems a bit strange to me.
- Gametap is losing 70 games due to expiring contracts with EA, Interplay, Atari and a few other publishers. It actually seems more significant to me that they are actually losing a contract with the publishers (EA in particular) than just the fact that they’re losing 70 of their games, since that means the loss of several future games as well. Strangely enough, Gametap just celebrated their 1000th game making it onto their network, and they will now have less than 1000 again. Their Editorial Director says they weren’t aware that the games would expire when they made the big announcement that they had hit 1000 games, but he also explains that the contracts with the publishers had a “beginning and an end.” If that was true before, why didn’t they see this coming? Did they simply forget about it, misunderstand their contract, or is there something we’re not hearing yet?
- Joystiq has obtained an “exclusive“interview of sorts with Jeff Gerstmann, which manages to add actually very little to the current knowledge of the event. Gerstmann says that he “stands by” his Kane and Lynch review, which I think should be a given by now, considering that he was allegedly fired over it. Other then that, he denies the irrelevant rumor that he didn’t complete Kane and Lynch, and basically just says he doesn’t know what he’s going to do just yet.
- Bioshock finally gets its widescreen “fix” this week, along with some supposedly free DLC containing new Plasmids. While I loved Bioshock, this actually doesn’t interest me much at all. While having the widescreen “fix” is sort of nice, I don’t think the original widescreen mode really ended up impacting the game at all. As for the DLC, playing through the story mode of Bioshock again just to play with some new Plasmids doesn’t seem like much motivation. Maybe if there were some kind of “arena” mode where you could basically just outfit your character anyway you wanted and you basically had to survive waves of attacks from enemies I could find some use for it… but I can’t imagine the plasmids will be interesting enough to make me want to play through the game again so soon. Since it’s going to be free, it almost makes me wonder what the point of even bringing it out is. Since it’s not a multiplayer game, it seems like the people to get the most use out of this pack would be people that haven’t played the game yet, but I highly doubt it’ll really sell any more copies either.
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:40 am
RedOctance executive producer Jeff Matsushita previously told Shacknews that the company intended to support the Xbox 360 edition of Guitar Hero II with downloadable content through the end of 2007.
This is my favorite line. The end of 2007 is 28 days away. I rather suspect this will be the last song pack, which would make this assertion pretty pointless. I’m actually surrpised they haven’t released more DLC for it.
In any case, while I admit it looks a bit strange on its face, the release of a new Guitar Hero game isn’t like the release of a new Halo game, where the refinements added mean that no one really plays the previous iteration anymore. If you want to play the GH2 tracks, you’re still putting in the GH2 disc.
On the subject of the Gerstmann interview, he’s declining to comment for “legal reasons.” Does this mean an impending lawsuit?
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:04 pm
“In any case, while I admit it looks a bit strange on its face, the release of a new Guitar Hero game isn’t like the release of a new Halo game, where the refinements added mean that no one really plays the previous iteration anymore. If you want to play the GH2 tracks, you’re still putting in the GH2 disc.”
Well, yes and no… While I agree with the general idea here, I would think there biggest moneymaker would be their newest in the franchise. Most people have probably stopped spinning GH2 at this point. I saw that RedOctane supposedly released this, but that doesn’t help the question of “who developed it”. RedOctane is now a part of Activision, so I’d guess that Neversoft developed it, but GH2 was still using the Harmonix engine, leading me to believe that perhaps they created all of this content a long time ago and they just took awhile to release this piece.
You bring up an interesting point, though… Wouldn’t it be nice if they somehow made these games inter-operable? So, for instance, Guitar Hero 4 comes out and it has an option for you to pop your Guitar Hero 3 disc in which gives you an option to “download” the songs you want off of the disc onto your HD. After that, you can play any of the songs from the previous game in Guitar Hero 4.
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Rob,
I doubt there’s an impending lawsuit. Unless he’s got a contract, which would be unusual, Gerstmann is most likely an “at-will” employee… which means that he could be fired because the editors didn’t like his haircut that morning.
“Legal reasons” could very well just mean that his severance package is contingent on not commenting on the termination, or any of another dozen minor possibilities.