from the the-best-things-in-life-are-free... dept
You may recall last year that the head of Warner Music Group, Edgar Bronfman Jr., demanded that music video games like
Guitar Hero and
Rock Band weren't paying enough for the music they used in the games, saying that the success of such games was
"entirely dependent on the content we own and control." As we mentioned at the time, this is the usual fallacy of the entertainment industry, to assume that the entire value of the product is in the content itself, rather than other aspects of it -- such as the gameplay. It looks like the initial sales results of the massively overhyped
Beatles Rockband is helping to prove this point. Despite all the attention and press and the fact that this was
the Beatles' music being offered in such a game for the first time, reader Eric alerts us to the news that
sales of the game have massively underperformed expectations. Sales were less than 60% of what most analysts expected, and some of the quotes from people suggest why:
"[It] felt like an expansion to me, not a full release... [It was] cool, but not quite enough to be a stand alone game ($60) purchase."
That's just one quote, but others have expressed a similar sentiment. The music... that's nice, but you can get Beatles' music all over. It's
the game that makes this worth buying -- or not worth buying. And just adding new music to an old game wasn't nearly as exciting as many people hoped it would be. This isn't to say the music is "worthless." But it does suggest -- yet again -- that the entertainment industry overvalues the contribution of the content itself.
Filed Under: beatles, music, rockband
