Major Nelson defends Guitar Hero II downloadable content

360 News | And Halo 3 beta.

Director of Programming for Xbox Live Larry Hyrb, otherwise known as Major Nelson, has defended the pricing of the new downloadable content for Guitar Hero II.

The prices of the songs available on the Xbox Live Marketplace have met with a hostile reaction - not least from PALGN's own forum members - but Hyrb felt they were justifiable. In an interview with Joystiq, the Major pointed out that, "There's testing involved, and there's also licensing involved. There's a lot of elements involved. When there's music involved, that brings up a lot of licensing issues. [...] We worked with RedOctane to work on prices that make sense, and they clearly can't sell it at a loss. They have to pay the rights licensing."

Away from Guitar Hero II, Hyrb also had a response prepared for those who complained that three weeks would be too short a period for the forthcoming Halo 3 beta. Well, sort of a response. "I guess I hate to be a cop-out, but I'd say "go ask Bungie," copped out Hyrb. "If I were them, I would think that three weeks is plenty of time to run a beta. I don't even know when their release is. They have to have enough time to take all that feedback and get it into the final product."

But could he guarantee that Xbox Live will be able to handle the beta, which will no doubt prove absurdly popular? "I've been told by our Operations Director that we've built out - that we're good to go."

Related Guitar Hero II Content

Indie DLC for Guitar Hero II
04 Dec, 2007 Because Guitar Hero III is so last month.

New Guitar Hero II song pack coming
20 Sep, 2007 Three songs, 500 points.

Over 2 million Guitar Hero II songs sold over Xbox Live
12 Sep, 2007 That's more than 650,000 song packs.

13 Comments

monkeyman

5 years ago

Major nelson dont know s**t, red ocatne have already licensed the tracks gor GH1 and dont need to license them again so they wouldnt be losing money. It's all greed on their part they make us a buy a guitar that dont work properly (im on my third one) and then they charge us for songs we already own on another console. But you have to buy them just to see where you rank in the world on the older songs.

Karai Pantsu

5 years ago

monkeyman wrote

It's all greed on their part they make us a buy a guitar that dont work properly (im on my third one) and then they charge us for songs we already own on another console. But you have to buy them just to see where you rank in the world on the older songs.

No one is making you buy anything.

After this level of reaction I'd be flabbergasted (heh... flabber) if the pricing structure didn't change for the next batch of DLC. Then again, chances are there is an awful lot of 'OMG I WONT BUY THIS RIPOFF CRAP DIE REDOCTANE' going from people while they're paying for and downloading the packs

Hell, I bought one - but I regret it after finding out how much 500 points actually costs.

Souless

5 years ago

Could somebody please tell me how much they exaclty are and what the contain, how many tracks.

Dont own the game or nothing, just interested.

Karai Pantsu

5 years ago

Certainly - info here.
Haven't been keeping up with the news forum?

Souless

5 years ago

Karai Pantsu wrote

Certainly - info here.
Haven't been keeping up with the news forum?

Hahah thanks mate, they are a little steap, it would of been better to launch one song for 100 points even, but what do you do.

But what happens with Guitar hero 3, will those songs then be able to transfer to that version, probably not but they expect you to trump out on 3 songs which barely add to the game to much.

Nothing you can do though, the end of the day its you who makes the addition to buy 3 songs for 8.25, probably not every song you will like.

Good luck with the decsion guys.

TheAnswer

5 years ago

Just a money making scheme as people get addicted to GH and need more songs. It's the new Singstar but they dont release new titles every few months. Can't wait to see how the Wii version will be.

ObsoletE

5 years ago

monkeyman wrote

Major nelson dont know s**t, red ocatne have already licensed the tracks gor GH1 and dont need to license them again so they wouldnt be losing money.

wrong.

in most cases licensing extends to the first release and subsequent licensing issues need to be completed for subsequent releases.

the main thing i see this happening in is DVD releases of TV shows. there are a couple of cases where the music from initial airing to DVD release has been changed because the licensing agreement from the show does not cover DVDs. and there are some others where this issue is so bad, entire regions miss out on the DVD release altogether.

examples?
Buffy has had songs changed.
Veronica Mars missed an Aussie release altogether.
Freaks and Geeks had songs changed, AND missed an Au release.

additionally, the licensing different formats might also be held by different people depending on format, especially with songs. one example i can think of with this is the music video for Nine Inch Nails' Song "Burn".
the band retained the rights for it on the VHS medium, and was able to include it on their video retrospective, but they don't have it for the DVD format. in this case, the rights are owned by the company that releases Natural Born Killers on DVD.

another example is the soundtrack to Donnie Darko. some of the songs changed from the initial release to the Director's Cut release were due to licensing issues.

now, in this multiformat world, people should be more careful when they license things, but it is highly possible that such a contingency was not thought of for Guitar Hero 1 at the time of release, or that perhaps the license agreement time term simply lapsed.

it might be a case of money grabbing, but it might also be a legitimate excuse.

Luke

5 years ago

^ With GH it's highly likely RedOctane simply licensed it for the PS2 version because they weren't sure GH1 was going to be so damn huge.

ObsoletE

5 years ago

^ that's what i was trying to imply.

licensing costs money, and if it saved them money to launch their title, it is very likely they didn't "waste" the money on formats they mightn't even get to.

i'm sure people would rather have more tunes licensed to one game, than half as many because the developers were hoping to get to another platform as well.

arbok

5 years ago

monkeyman wrote

It annoys me when the top executives think they know best, I speak of Major Nelson in particular, but also Ken Kutaragi, Phil Harrison, Shane Kim. The general public are disgruntled at the pricing structure of the downloadable content yet they ignore us. Im so sick of the gaming industry being treated like a business.

Picture packs - 150 points? Themes 150 points? Horse Armour 250 points? Paying for Cheats in the Godfather when it was free on every other system? I laugh at these prices.

Well if people want to spend their money its their own perogative - but these prices aren't for me. Just the notion of paying for a pack of 5 pictures just makes me laugh at how low Microsoft will go to make money. Pathetic.

And as for the right price for GH Downloadable content? - They should have offered a couple of free packs of songs to start with, and then charge 400 points for 5 songs - at the very most!

ObsoletE

5 years ago

^ i'm kinda in two minds about what you've said.

on the one hand, i fully agree regarding the picture packs, and cheats. especially the cheats. something that has been around since the dawn of gaming should not be chargeable, and i would hope that people voted with their wallets enough that this will disappear soon.

but for actual in game content, i can understand charging. i don't like it, but i can understand it. the problem i have is the content:price ratio. at the moment, it seems far to expensive for almost everything i've seen in terms of what you get compared to what it costs. the horse armour is a perfect example.

3 songs for ~$9 seems reasonable to me though.

i also think it should be up to the developer to determine the cost. if Epic wanted to give stuff for free, they should be allowed to.

matrix-cat

5 years ago

Have they updated the old songs with the new GH2-era Hammer Ons and Pull Offs? If they have then it isn't as if they just copy and pasted the code. Still not worth $3 a song, but they've still put some effort in.

legend166

5 years ago

What he said makes no sense in anyway. At all.

I mean, he said that RedOctane didn't want to sell the songs at a loss. Yet, if you added up all the downloadable content, it ends up costing more than GH1 which had all the songs, which would mean they are selling the games at a loss, which they are obviously not doing.

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