So, after years when just two competitors were on the market, we are now flooded with similar types of games, all of them trying to get a big slice of the pie for themselves. However, unlike what it’s happening in the casual gaming world, for example, where there are three different types of games cloned by hundreds of developers and STILL being successful, these newly introduced GH and RB clones are more or less failures.
The thing is that none of the released ones manages to reach the potential, none seems to have what it takes to defeat the two giants. Nintendo’s Wii Music was poorly received by critics and players alike, being considered a financial failure. Another game promises to hit the Wii console and has the potential of hitting the big “failure” button, even though it brings a generally better song list: I’m talking about Ultimate Band from Disney.
There are various reasons: some of them pretty obvious (like the fact that both GH and RB are already known and owned by the public and they’re considered legends) and some less obvious ones. One other reason that’s still somehow connected with the previous one refers to the bands themselves. Having in mind that Rock Band and Guitar Hero will bring them a huge boost in sales and popularity, there’s no reason for them to go for the lower league and get nothing in exchange, right? Even Metallica’s Death Magnetic was release in the virtual music world at the same time as in the real world!
Which proves a painful thing: hardware does matter. The little Nintendo console simply does not have the capacity to hold hundreds of songs from different games, while the Xbox and PS3 do. Also, the family-friendly nature of the Wii does not seem to appeal the general theme of this kind of games: after all, rock stars do not look like cute little puffy puppies which are all peaceful and well behaved!
As long as there’s no innovation and only copying of an over-used concept, there can’t be success. But, once again, this does not seem to stop the developers – which, is the exact same reason why we can complain, at a larger scale, about the general quality of video games today: offering us a game that follows the same pattern just because it’s “safe” bores us sooner or later. Look at the music genre. Except for the firsts – GH and RB, it’s dead.