E3 2008: Music Games on Xbox 360

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E3 2008: Music Games on Xbox 360

Mon, Jul 14, 2008

Microsoft's Xbox 360 Media Briefing, beyond being scored with hard-rocking tunes for the entrances of its various executives, spent a lengthy period discussing the future of music-based games for the platform. Following the presentation's overall theme of "something for everybody," Microsoft's Shane Kim introduced the music genre as the type of game that appeals to both the hardcore and the excitable newbies. With that in mind, the presentation went on to feature three upcoming games, all with killer features, and all poised to compete for your bass-pounding buck.

Kim dropped a little knowledge before letting the rock stars take the stage: According to Kim, the Xbox 360 is the premier destination for game songs, boasting 3.5 million songs downloaded via Xbox Live each month. He also claims this accounts for 80% of all song downloads across all platforms -- "all" also including only the PS3, as far as I can tell. Of course, that would still put the 360 ahead of the PS3 by four-to-one, if true.

Guitar Hero WT Up first was Kai Huang, president and founder of Red Octane, who took the stage to reveal a few big names who'd dropped their hats into the Guitar Hero ring. Beyond the features we already knew about Guitar Hero: World Tour (8-player "Battle of the Bands" mode, Music Studio, etc), Huang had a few excellent bands to namedrop: Van Halen and The Eagles were both confirmed as GH exclusives. An "REM track pack," containing three songs off the group's latest album, was promised as DLC for the World Tour launch. Metallica -- who is also supposed to be getting their own game, a la Guitar Hero: Aerosmith -- will be premiering their entire new album, Death Magnetic, simultaneously as Guitar Hero DLC, first in GH3, and subsequently in GH:WT when the latter game launches. This is a nice nod to GH3 players, though it begs the question -- will the GH:WT versions have the same guitar/bass tracks, and if so, is there any benefit from owning both versions? Or will the GH:WT versions simply be the GH3 versions except with two more instruments?

Duffy Next up was iNiS' Keiichi Yano, creator of Elite Beat Agents, who introduced a new title for the 360's music line-up: "Lips," a Karaoke party title featuring two microphones and full-length music videos. On the surface, it looked more or less like Microsoft's answer to Singstar, though with one especially potent new wrinkle: Lips will be able to add new songs to its library by downloading music off of your Zune or iPod. Other new features were mentioned as well, including motion-sensors and lights in the microhones, and there was a live performance of "Mercy" by Duffy, but honestly, I think being able to finally import your own music into a console game (Vib Ribbon notwithstanding) is the trump card. Games like Audiosurf and Song Summoner raised the bar, and I expect it'll be tough to sell music games WITHOUT this feature in the coming months. I'm also quite curious to see how the vocal matching is executed.

Finally, Alex Rigopulos of Harmonix took the stage, devoting his entire presentation to the tracklist from Rock Band 2 -- not a single feature was mentioned in all the bands Rigopulos listed to the world. And list them he did -- briefly displayed on the screen was the entire songlist from RB2. We managed to snap a blurry photo, and we wrote down as many as we could -- we ought to expect a full release to come from Harmonix shortly. In the meantime, we noted the presence of Modest Mouse, the Allman Brothers, Talking Heads, Joan Jett, Devo, The Who, Motorhead, Beck, Journey, Foo Fighters, Presidents of the USA, and Avenged Sevenfold. Also, competing with Kai Huang's earlier exclusive bands, Rigopulos announced forthcoming deals with Bob Dylan, new material from Guns & Roses, and an exclusive agreement with one of Harmonix's holy grails -- AC/DC. Between these, the ability to export your RB1 songs, and the wealth of DLC continuing to become available, there will be 500 songs available to play for RB2 by the end of the year.

We'll be attending the Rock Band event later in the week, where, we have the sneaking suspicion, Rock Band 2 may well be in playable form. We'll keep you posted on all the updates.