Yeah, this pretty much sums up what is wrong with the Guitar Hero brand

By Joe Fourhman | September 7, 2009

Enjoy the remnants of your Labor Day feast with this cutting parody video about the upcoming critical fave: Guitar Hero: The Beatles. It ships on all major platforms 10-10-010.

Seen on Joystiq

Ones to Watch on PS3, PSP for September 2009

By Paul Munn | August 31, 2009

ps_logo_gray_95x95 In case you haven’t noticed this summer hasn’t been a dry one for games and it is with some measure of dread that the onslaught of Fall games rises up before me not just on the PS3 but the long-ignored PSP. But if hints of Adhoc Party appearing in September’s release of PS3 Firmware 3.00 for North America do come true, I will be stuck with an even bigger list of older PSP titles I would want to buy and play online. Enough grumping about not having infinite time and money: to the games!
Read the rest of this entry »

Guitar Hero 5 Helps My Sofa Ass Groove

By Vikki Blake | August 9, 2009

guitar-hero-5-20090807005914201_640w

I love Guitar Hero. I have no shame in that. I can’t quite rock Mr. Crowley whilst simultaneously completing two Rubik’s cubes like this guy, but I’m happy enough with the mad skillz of my inner rock goddess.

I still get all fangirly when a new title hits the shelves. But the downside to this phenomenally successful franchise? There are just too many songs, dude. I have two or three favourite tracks on each GH version, and it’s annoying as hell to have to lift my ass out of it’s sofa groove just because I wanna switch from Mr. Brightside to Sweet Child O’Mine to Reptillia. I had hoped that Greatest/Smash Hits would’ve fixed this dilemma, but alas not … according to Activsion, Sweet Child is not awesome enough (W.T.F.!?! FAIL, ACTIVISION – FAIL.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Activision Talks Dropping PS3 Support

By Joe Haygood | June 19, 2009

robert_kotick Our favorite gaming CEO mouthpiece, Bobby Kotick, has once again mentioned the need for Sony to lower the price of their console, but he added a new wrinkle to the announcement.

It seems that Bobby seems to feel that the high price of the console has stagnated the growth of the PS3, and that Activision may have to cut development for the platform, as it sees lackluster sales in comparison to other platforms.

Now I am not a super smart businessman, but something tells me that while the PS3 may sell less copies of multiplatform titles than the Xbox 360 or the Nintendo Wii, but recent sales of Call of Duty 4 and all the Guitar Hero releases on the PS3 would make me think there is still value to publishing on the platform.

via Talking About Games

Read the rest of this entry »

Publishers: No More Plastic Crap With Your Games

By Joe Haygood | May 27, 2009

scratchdjcontroller After seeing yesterday’s Tony Hawk listing for $120 and now looking at two completely different controllers for Scratch: The Ultimate DJ and DJ Hero, I am now officially done with plastic controllers. I am tired of seeing a new game come out with the philosophy that it needs a new controller.

Let me ask you this: Did Tony Hawk Proving Grounds suck because it needed a new controller, or did it suck because it was basically, the same Tony Hawk game I have been playing since I owned Tony Hawk 2 almost 10 years ago to this day? The controller has no bearing on Tony Hawk being a good game. Tony Hawk was out-gamed by its competitor, skate!, which offered a new perspective and new control format, without resorting to bundling in plastic crap.

Read the rest of this entry »

Shock Rocker Alice Cooper Comes to Rock Band

By Joe Haygood | May 15, 2009

alice-cooper After providing a c0uple of tracks for the Guitar Hero franchise, iconic rocker Alice Cooper is finally coming to Rock Band next week with six of the band’s hit records. Along with Alice Cooper, the hard rock group, Taking Back Sunday will round out the week’s offerings with a trio of songs.

Alice Cooper “Under My Wheels” (Live)
Alice Cooper “I’m Eighteen” (Live)
Alice Cooper “Billion Dollar Babies” (Live)
Alice Cooper “School’s Out” (Live)
Alice Cooper “Poison”
Alice Cooper “Vengeance is Mine”
Taking Back Sunday “What’s It Feel Like to Be a Ghost?”
Taking Back Sunday “Liar”
Taking Back Sunday “MakeDamnSure”

The Alice Cooper track back will be 800 Microsoft Loonies ($9.99 USD). The Taking Back Sunday pack will set you back 440 Microsoft Loonies. As with other track packs, you can buy songs from the packs individually for 160 Microsoft Loonies (1.99 USD).

While I am happy about getting some Alice Cooper in Rock Band, it kills me that the songs are live. I bought the Def Leppard tracks for GH3, which were live, and they were terrible. I am sure it has to do with the rights to the songs and so forth, but I have a fear that there will be freakish pitch changes or out of place guitar solos that you are unprepared for, because they were never in the original recordings. That said, I am a sucker, and I will probably end up getting them. Check the jump for the full presser.

Read the rest of this entry »

Another addition to the Guitar Hero franchise

By Mike Koss | April 12, 2009

gh-pajama-box

We’ve all heard about wanting to exploit, monetize, capitalize, pillage, etc; and, we’ve heard about all of the releases scheduled for this year. But allow me to introduce to you the latest (illegitimate) child in the Guitar Hero franchise that does not come in a disk or ROM format for playback in your console: Guitar Hero Sleep Shorts. Yes, now you too can sleep like a rockstar with Guitar Hero branded pajamas. If not you, at least I will, since I received a pair for Easter. Jump for a couple of shots of the actual product unboxed. And, no, there aren’t any shots of this product in use, unless we receive 10 e-mails requesting it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gamerize your iGoogle

By Mike Koss | March 26, 2009

igoogle-sf4theme While trying to figure out Xi in Home last night (watch for more info on that soon), I noticed that Google’s customized homepages, known as iGoogle, are now able to sport game-based themes. Right now theme choices include Animal Crossing, Mega Man, Zelda, Street Fighter IV, The Sims 3, and Guitar Hero just to name a few. These themes aren’t just limited to one visual representation. An example is the Mega Man version has different setups for the bosses and characters. Pretty nifty move by Google to license, and/or get the copyright holders to build these nice themes for their site.

So now you can proudly wear your gamer cred on your web search engine, for all of your co-workers, friends, and family to view over your shoulder. I know I use iGoogle as my home page for my browser, since I can have all the nifty things I need prominently displayed Aeropause RSS feed, other RSS feeds, current weather, quotes, etc. If you do use Google drop a comment for the theme you use. If you don’t use Google, drop a comment about the theme you *would* use, and what search engine/customized homepage that you do use.

Dan Rosensweig Hired to Exploit, I Mean Run Guitar Hero Brand

By Joe Haygood | March 23, 2009

danrosenweig Activision announced that they have hired Dan Rosensweig, former COO at Yahoo, to run Red Octane, the company behind the Guitar Hero franchise. He will be responsible for making all the decisions with the Guitar Hero branding, and will report directly to Mike Griffith, CEO of Activision Publishing. Kai Huang, the former CEO of Red Octane, will stay on in some capacity with the company, and will report to Dan Rosensweig.

Now, I am not scholared in the ways of running a game business, or an empire like the Guitar Hero franchise, but I might have a word or two of advice for Mr. Rosensweig, that he might want to think on before making any decisions. STOP FLEECING THE GUITAR HERO BRAND NAME! We do not need six Guitar Hero games in a one year span. Anecdotal evidence shows that the Guitar Hero World Tour box set has not sold up to expectations (and to be fair, neither has the Rock Band 2 box set), and flooding the market wth Guitar Hero product after Guitar Hero product is a surefire way to kill a brand. One only has to look at what happens with movie sequels to understand. Does anyone enjoy Friday the 13th Part VIII, or beyond for that matter. How about Saw V, or Rocky VI? Harmonix has kind of figured this out, opting to release one Rock Band franchise this year, which is a wholly separate entity, The Beatles Rock Band. Yes the brand has been a goldmine for Activision, but all mines eventually lose all their precious metal veins, and you end up with a burnt out husk of a former great game.

Check the press release after the jump for more details.

Read the rest of this entry »

Aeropodcast #73: Poppin’ The Cherry

By Joe Haygood | March 11, 2009

sara This is an extra special podcast this week, as we are visited by one Sara “DirtyDiva” Nicholson, formerly of Gamerscoreblog.com. It was her first podcast, so we tried to go easy on her. Of course it was our first female guest on the podcast, so it was an episode, chock full of firsts. Our discussion this week focused on the future generations of consoles and whether digital downloads would become the normal distribution path for those devices. While I felt that some publishers would take that step, eager to keep profits closer to home, everyone else seemed to think that it was one generation too soon. But we did look towards Valve as someone that might dabble with the concept of digital delivery as a means of game purchase on the console.

We read off a new review that we received from one Assassin10K from The10K.com, while Jebediah Snyder asks us about musical instrument saturation. We all had the thought that we had already reached a saturation point, but our news section proved that the game companies seem to think otherwise. Yes, in the news we talk about the new Beatles: Rock Band title that will have specialty instruments coming out for it, N’Gai Croal leaving Newsweek and the Regigigis that is coming to Toys R Us soon just to name a few items. We also apologize for the longer podcasts, but we feel that in the end, good discussion should never be cut back for the clock.

Music is brought to you by RevolutionVoid, at www.revolutionvoid.com. The podcast as always is put together by our expert mixmaster, Stephen. Images via www.saranicholson.com.

Download the podcast from here or subscribe to the podcast using one of the services below: Also make sure to review us on iTunes.