One of the things I like about Rock Band is that the DLC is regular, reasonably priced and à la carte - you can pick just the tracks you want and it doesn’t break the bank. Guitar Hero conversely has so far not released very much DLC, generally charges more for it (500 points for a 3-song pack compared to 80-120 points per track in Rock Band), and doesn’t give you the option of just purchasing the tracks you want - it’s the whole pack or nothing, making it much less convenient.
Worse are the ‘band branded’ retail supplements like GH: Aerosmith which are the ultimate in forced bulk purchasing, and something I’ve always looked on with derision. They’re chronically expensive, they’re all-or-nothing, you’re no doubt paying for stuff you don’t really want or need (like the modelling of Steve Tyler’s frankly shocking visage, which I imagine took every ounce of normal mapping skill on the part of the artist to capture its craggy terrain) - they’re the antethesis of the self-service, customer-pleasing DLC that Rock Band offers. You could say that Rock Band 2 is the same, but there’s 2 differences: 1) you’re getting a refined play experience, and 2) you get 106 varied tracks for your money, a massive saving over regular DLC. Together those are enough to justify it, so long as it’s a rare occurrence.
All was well until this week, when MTV announced that they would be releasing Rock Band : AC/DC (exclusively through Wal-Mart in the US) - a band-branded physical media add-on precisely in the vein of GH: Aerosmith, and that it wouldn’t be made available as DLC. Worse, it’s even more of a rip off than GH:A, costing a whopping £30 for a paltry 18 tracks. What the hell are they thinking?
If there’s a tissue-thin silver lining to this story, it’s that at least you can transfer all the songs from the disc into Rock Band 2 as pseudo-DLC, just like you can with the Rock Band 1 tracks; so at least you’re not condemned to disc-swapping. But still, you can’t buy it any other way than all in one shrink-wrapped package, and the price is daylight robbery - who forgot to tell them that when you bulk-buy, you should get goods at a lower price? Beyond the price, I fundamentally disagree with the forced packaging, and the exclusive arrangement they’re taking with this one, it’s an entirely retrograde step and entirely at odds with everything Harmonix have been doing so far.
Harmonix have stated that they don’t like exclusive content, that they dislike restricting music choice, and I completely agree with that. One of the reasons I like Rock Band is that you really do get the sense it’s made by people who know and love music more than anything else. My guess (hope?) is that it’s not them who made this call - maybe the business guys at MTV overruled them, seeing the dollar signs lighting up. Or, maybe it was AC/DC’s management who refused to allow the piecemeal DLC route; they’re one of the few remaining bands who don’t allow track downloads via iTunes (either because of greed, snobbery, luddite tendencies, who knows). Or maybe Wal-Mart dangled a fat juicy bribe in front of the MTV biz guys and led them down the dark path. I don’t know - but I’d really rather not believe that Harmonix have lost their way here, given how in touch with the customer they’ve been so far. I hope it’s a one-off special case; if MTV start doing this for other bands the way Activision has openly said it plans to, it will seriously erode my respect for the Rock Band franchise. Given the goodwill Harmonix have built up so far doing things the ‘right’ customer-friendly way with DLC, contrasting markedly with the way Activision have been doing things, the very last thing they should be doing is tossing all that down the crapper switching to an overtly corporate approach.
I don’t much care for AC / DC anyway so I can happily ignore this; had they released it via the normal DLC channels I might have purchased a couple of signature tracks, such as Back in Black, but there’s no way I’m going to buy an entire disc full; so they’ve lost a sale or two there, and I would expect that applies to others who have merely a passing acquaintance with the band. In essence, which band it is doesn’t matter; it’s the precedent that it sets which is very concerning.
Note to Baz: I wrote the majority of this post before you accused me of ignoring the story because of my raging Rock Band bias 
October 1st, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Note to Steve: Yeah - right!
October 1st, 2008 at 7:10 pm
In general I agree with everything you are saying. in specific I’m absolutely addicted to AC/DC and will be standing in line to get it without counting the cost.
I’m not going to defend them in any way…but I’d rather have this than not have AC/DC in rock band. If this is what it took to get AC/DC to participate, then so be it.
OK, I will defend them on one point - GH and Aerosmith started the trend, not Roack band & AC/DC. If I was AC/DC I’d look at it & say “hey those guys got their own game. if you want me in, then I want my own game too”
October 1st, 2008 at 7:10 pm
There’s such a thing as a Rock Band bias? I consider it more of a quality bias or a “doesn’t suck” bias. Rock Band does the little things right (dlc, graphics, UI, music charting), Neversoft’s GH does not. Buying GH3 was one of the worst decisions I made, after playing it through once it really never gets any play time, whereas RB 1 (and now 2) is always in my 360’s drive.
That said, I am also unhappy about the AC/DC bundle. I would have also bought Back In Black and You Shook Me, but I’m not touching a full separate game of AC/DC songs if my life depended on it. So no sale for me too.
I have your back Steve, anyone who thinks you have a RB bias *must* have a GH bias themselves. Horse-blinders inspired bias is the *only* explanation for people’s personal preference. Everybody knows that…
October 1st, 2008 at 7:40 pm
@Baz: it’s completely true - I often compose my posts during fragments of snatched time during the day, and given my predisposal to the long & rambling it often takes me a couple of days to craft one. This one would have been posted tomorrow if you hadn’t ‘encouraged’ me to speed it up
@Ant: you may be right, in which case if this continues customers will get an inferior experience for the sake of the inflated egos of a few rock stars. Joy.
@eric: yeah I agree completely - I played GH1 and GH2 for most of 2007; I played GH3 for about 2-3 weeks before becoming so unhappy with it I went back to GH2 - I was happy to see the back of it when Rock Band came out. Baz is just pissed at Harmonix because RB doesn’t love PS3 as much, it’s not his fault
October 1st, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Yeah it sucks, but I’m like Ant. If a “Tool” version came out for instance, I’d pick it up in a heartbeat (and be part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution)
October 1st, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Me, pissed? Nah…. Okay maybe…
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:08 am
Wait, so you can install the songs to your hard drive for use in Rock Band 2?
So….a group of gamers can split the cost and just pass the disc around?
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:25 am
@LewieP: no, there’s a ‘1-time code’ which I assume is based on a code in the box, stopping you from doing it more than once (it has to be validated online). They couldn’t do this with the RB1 transfer (no code in the RB1 box because they didn’t anticipate it), so RB1 can be passed around, but they clearly wanted to stop that in the future.
The more I think about this, the more I think the boxed package is an AC/DC condition. Not only because of the ‘Aerosmith got theirs! <pout>’ factor; think about it - this is an ageing rock band who are just about to release a new album ‘Black Ice’, the last one they will do (allegedly). They already have an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart on this new album. Then, lo and behold the only place you will be able to buy Rock Band: AC/DC is on the shelf right next to their new album. Classic marketing tactics.
If you could download AC/DC tracks directly on your console, you’d never go into Wal-Mart and be exposed to this new album too, right? And I bet AC/DC want to make as much as they can from this swansong, so it makes sense to force people to bump into the album if they want the Rock Band content. I think that’s the main driver behind the decision.
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:00 am
One has to wonder if this is a music industry influence. Like an evil ring whispering things to the subconcious… “screw them… put drm in wherever you can… try putting a rootkit on the cd…”