During the recent GDC in San Francisco, LoPiccolo met with GamesIndustry.biz to talk about why it took so long for the genre to catch on in the US, the music industry's response and some of the company's future plans for the new franchise.
Viacom has paid Rock Band developer Harmonix an additional USD 208.7 million under terms of the company's acquisition.MTV Games(Viacom), acquired Harmonix back in 2006 for USD 175 million. Viacom's Form statement, indicates that the company offered a financial incentive as part of the acquisition.Viacom has reported paying USD 208.7 million to Harmonix last year under the terms of this contractual agreement, and expects to have a final payment due in 2009 for performance through calendar 2008.
Rock Band has been out for about three months now, but there are still two prerelease promises about downloadable content that Harmonix and MTV Games have yet to fulfill. The pair have not released any full albums, nor have they dug up any of the 18 Grateful Dead songs licensed last year.
Imagine our surprise when we read this morning that Valve used their party on Wednesday night to let it slip that Jonathan Coulton's brilliant song "Still Alive" would be available as DLC on Rock Band.
Though they missed their initial ship date of Feb. 12, Harmonix and MTV Games just announced that standalone drum kits are on their way to North American retail stores.
A new drum kit will run you $80, keep an eye out for these kits as they begin to trickle into your brick-and-mortars.
The powers that be over at iTunes have decided to cash in on the Rock Band cash cow. They have compiled all the songs used in Rock Band into one place on the iTunes store allowing you to download all your favorites to your hearts content. If you want all of them though it's going to cost you a pretty penny. At .99 a song the whole catalog will set you back $73.26.
According to January sales numbers, MTV's Rock Band has narrowly edged out Guitar Hero III in sales on Xbox 360. Though it won by the slimmest of margins, this is a significant turn for Rock Band, which had previously trailed Guitar Hero monthly sales significantly.
Is this related to DLC and additional charge ? Can anyone who have this game comment on it ? I don't have the game, so I couldn't investigate this further.
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