Michael Corvin

I don't think I can go back to cover songs.

Shagrath

Don't worry, guys. Dance Central will be enough to keep HMX afloat.

chuckd21

VGA noms:

Best Music Game
- Dance Central
- DJ Hero 2
- Def Jam Rapstar
- Rock Band 3

Best Soundtrack
- Def Jam Rapstar
- DJ Hero 2
- Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
- Rock Band 3

Shagrath

Spike is owned by Viacom.. Who's gonna win? :rolleyes

chuckd21

Hey, DJ Hero beat Beatles Rock Band last year...

Shagrath

Beatles didn't bring anything new to the table (besides harmonies). This year it's DJ Hero 2 (same shit), GH:WoR (Pig Lars), or RB3 (keyboards, real guitar/bass) and Dance Central (dancing!). I think whoever has the most innovation is going to win.

superfro

That's because it was the better game. As is DJ Hero 2 vs. RB3 this year.

fumanstan

Demise is a harsh word, but it's pretty obvious the genre is far, far from where it was 2 years ago in popularity where it would sell millions.

Drexl

I imagine it will be like the fighting games. They have a dedicated following, but they aren't the blockbusters they were in the 90's.

flashburn

Yeah, I can agree with that.

This will suck though, because it might limit the amount of big name artists we get. Then again, we've already got a pretty decent selection of classic stuff, and I don't really care about any of the big newer artists, so it's not too terrible. RBN content has been a bigger draw for me recently, although shoveling through the ridiculous amount of "MySpace" bands is tedious at best.

chuckd21

Super Meat Boy songs coming to RBN.

superfro

That should bring the count to about 4000 things "coming to RBN". That shit is slow going.

Michael Corvin

Splosion' Man's Donut Song was announced in April and no sign of a release. Expect Super Meat Boy somtime next July. Did the SM theme song get removed? I don't see it on RockBandAide.

Is RockBandAide the best place to track RBN stuff?

flashburn

It probably expired in Peer Review or Playtesting. There has been tons of stuff that was up for testing at the beginning of RBN and it still hasn't come out because of this. I think some of them have given up unfortunately. It sucks too, cause I've played some good stuff I was looking forward to buying.

Michael Corvin

Well that's one broken-ass system then. You have companies and artists announcing to their fans that their tunes will be in RB and then never show up. Awesome.

flashburn

Yeah, RBN is pretty screwed up. This whole "lets make people pay money to do our QA testing" thing is a huge fuck up on their part. Of course they will just blame it on Microsoft since it's part of the Indie Games setup, but there had to be a better solution than what they came up with.

pinata242

The only other way would be to have the RBN be channeled through, approved, and submitted by Harmonix as official DLC.

It's way better than nothing.

chuckd21

Harmonix / Microsoft should run contests giving away RBN accounts to the hardest of the hardcore Rock Band players. Let them get in there and test it all.

flashburn

Not really. They could have some sort of credit system. Give out 1000 2 month XNA passes to start out. Then after X amount of reviews done, reward that user with another 2 month pass. I'm sure they could of worked out a deal with Microsoft to do that.

As it is, something will need to be done, and soon, if they want more than 10-20% of the actual RBN songs to be released. There have quite possibly been around 500+ songs that are either sitting there gathering dust or have expired. I don't have an XNA account so I don't know the exact number. Shagrath might have a better estimate. It's only getting worse too, as less and less people are doing reviews.

DJLinus

I just hope that Wheatus' "Teenage Dirtbag" sees the light of day on RBN at some point. It's still my most anticipated of the songs that were rumored (pre-RBN launch) to be coming out.

Not to bring it back to the Harmonix sale and the "poor performance" of RB3, but I wonder how that figures into RBN's future, specifically with Sub Pop's grandiose plan to put its entire catalog on it (that was the deal, no?). Will they think its not worth it now? I really want some Postal Service and Velocity Girl.

Shagrath

There have been a couple of the authoring houses that have done this. Of course, it's a whole shitload of work to do even just one track. If you wanted to test every instrument on a song, you're looking at four playthroughs of drums, guitar, and bass, and one for vocals. And that's if there's nothing wrong. Without a rewind feature, you've got to play the song again to get the MBT (Measure Beat Tick) of where the problem occured to let the author know.

Fuck that.

superfro

flashburn

Yeah, the playtesting functionality is completely lacking. There needs to be the ability to fast forward and rewind at any point of the song to any other given point. But this is just one of many issues with RBN.

pinata242

Is it possible RBN2.0 going to fix some of those issues?

flashburn

Totally possible. Only time will tell.

I think they are going to have to do something about the lack of reviews pretty soon. It's just ticking off all of the authoring groups.