Many of us now own some form of rhythm, music or karaoke game for the Xbox 360, Wii, PC, PS2 or PS3. Whether played in seclusion, online or with friends, the paraphernalia of these games litter our bedrooms and living rooms.
With the release of Guitar Hero 5 in September our collective wallets groaned at the appearance of another music game that purveyed the opportunity for us to either ham our way or excel through a collection of classic and less well-known rock (and variations of the genre) tracks. Yet, other than choosing which console version to buy, you still needed to decide how much kit you bought.
If you had not picked up the full bundle in World Tour, then you were faced with the decision of how much Guitar Hero you purchased: just the game, because you already had guitars from the previous Guitar Heroes? Or maybe the game plus a guitar, because you didn't have any of the previous games and you'd never have enough people round to play the drums and bass guitar, let alone sing? Or you decided to buy the full game, because you have friends, and the spending power to buy a game that had an RRP greater than the cost of at least two of the current home consoles.
A similar situation arose with the release of The Beatles: Rock Band in the same week that Guitar Hero 5 was launched. You may have held off from buying the previous Rock Band games, but the Fab Four finally tempted you into buying yet another expensive game when purchasing the full kit. If you already owned an earlier Rock Band game then the instruments were compatible and you did not have to worry about buying the imposing giant box that lined the floors of popular game retailers in September. But without the brand power of the Guitar Hero franchise, The Beatles: Rock Band had dropped out of the top 40 (according to cross platform charts) within a month, whereas Guitar Hero 5 was still hanging on in the top 10.
Switch to now and Guitar Hero 5 is about ready to drop out of the top 40, and the costly DJ Hero is descending through the charts at a rate of knots after failing to have the same initial sales success as its guitar focused brethren. Again, DJ Hero was prohibitively expensive, yet only as much as a Guitar Hero game with a guitar. Band Hero, released this month, has not managed to make an impact across the platforms.
A music game franchise, though, that is doing surprisingly well is the SingStar games for the PS2 and PS3. Whilst not staying for long in the overall top 40, they remain consistently popular on the PS2. Obviously SingStar has an extremely different overall game play style to the likes of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, one that is elegantly simplistic as opposed to the frantic fret bashing and finger numbing play of those two franchises. SingStar also tends towards the lower end of budget limits.
SingStar games also have another advantage over the Hero and Rock Band games: they're far less complex to develop. The SingStar games appear not to have the same development needs as instrument based games. All music games face legal issues whilst in development, due to song rights. However, the legal problems don't always go away after the game has been developed. Ongoing wrangling over the use of Kurt Cobain's image in Guitar Hero 5, and similar problems with No Doubt in Band Hero, have left Activision with a rather large headache.
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