Video thrills the radio stars
The Age
Thursday October 8, 2009
The success of music gaming has proved a lucrative business, writes Andrew Murfett. IT'S A multibillion-dollar battle fought out on plastic guitars and drums.Once a niche in the gaming world, music-based gaming is now worth billions. However, after surging 68 per cent in 2008, sales have plunged 46 per cent so far this year, according to researchers NPD.In an attempt to counter the slide, the two main players, California's Activision and Boston developer Harmonix, have just released their latest editions of their Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises.Each game uses plastic instruments to "play" along to songs from top-selling acts.The fifth incarnation of Guitar Hero, which has sold 34 million units, boasts grunge legends Nirvana, while Rock Band, with 10 million sales, has the Beatles.Making the battle more intriguing is the two founders of Harmonix, Eran Egozy and Alex Rigopulos, who created and developed Guitar Hero. Their publisher, Red Octane, sold the Guitar Hero brand to Activision in 2005 for $100 million. Viacom's MTV Games then acquired Harmonix in 2006 for $175 million.Rigopulos remains at Harmonix as chief executive to compete against the franchise he developed. He says there's little room for sentimentality."Hero was our breakthrough game," he says. "But there's a whole new world we wanted to explore in music games."Music gaming was originally deemed a non-event. Games makers struggled to secure songs and were often forced to record cover versions.Gaming was the subject of several panels at last month's Big Sound conference in Brisbane, where Tim Riley, Activision's global head of music, spoke.Riley says he receives up to 100 pieces of unsolicited music every day."It's been an interesting evolution for us," he says.When Guitar Hero became a blockbuster, artists realised gaming was a significant revenue stream and promotional platform. "Most of the bigger, more well-established acts didn't grow up with games," Harmonix's Rigopulos says. "It didn't seem like a big business opportunity and it wasn't creatively interesting to them."Rock Band now has a "download store", where it sells tracks to use on the game for $1.99 each. This earns the artist 50 cents a song. (On Apple's iTunes Store, each act receives just a few cents a download). Harmonix has sold more than 50 million downloads.Guitar Hero-branded games from Van Halen, Aerosmith and Metallica have outsold each band's respective previous album. Aerosmith's game, for example, sold 2.5 million copies, double its most recent album's sales.AC/DC, Green Day and Pearl Jam have signed exclusivity deals to release new music through gaming platforms and the competition for acts is brutal.The deals are lucrative. According to the Los Angeles Times, Viacom guaranteed the Beatles' shareholders a $10 million sum and will pay up to $40 million, depending on how well the game sells."We're not a competitor to recorded music," Rigopulos says. "It's like live music is not a competitor. We deepen players' interest in music. Players become attached to it."Both makers have quietly shifted focus from the unprofitable business of hardware to software and the licensing of tracks.While declining to offer exact figures, the senior vice-president of MTV Games, Paul DeGooyer, says hardware is a virtual loss-leader for his group."Selling the hardware is not a really profitable enterprise for anybody," he says. "Rock Band's download business is tremendously successful and enables us to do some things that end up being very lucrative."Riley says that later this year, Activision will release DJ Hero, focusing on electronic and hip-hop artists such as Eminem and Jay-Z, and Band Hero, aimed squarely at families."Initially it was just guitar in games," he says. "It's almost like anything goes now. We're finding more places to use the most popular music out there."
© 2009 The Age
