Email: Beatles, Rock Band

Hi Mr. Malstrom,

I know you’re swamped with blog-related emails, but if you ever get a free second and have the inclination, I’d be curious to get your take on a couple of issues pertaining to the recently-released Beatles: Rock Band.

1. Would you call it a core title or a title for the expanded audience? The content seems pretty aggressively geared towards the expanded market (specifically all the aging boomers who’ve successfully resisted all the music games to date), but core (or maybe more correctly “upmarket?”) features like DLC and netplay and HD presentation were pushed pretty hard too.

It has to be core since music games have been around long enough to create a core market from them. Expanded market is about expanding. These new music games aren’t expanding anything. At one point, they would be expanded. But they are definitely core now. And you could even say fallen core.

The music games is a great example of taking too many trips to the well. Music games were a great success. So various companies flooded the market with music games. This is your ‘industry’ at work.

Instead of managing this music game demand appropriately, the “Game Industry” had a strip mine approach to it. Now, it will be a long time before anyone gets excited about music games again.

2. Do you have any thoughts about the game’s “walled garden” protection scheme (which prevents RB: Beatles songs from being played within any other RB game)? It seems like a questionable decision on Harmonix’ part with some long-reaching implications for customers’ rights, but the circumstances might be somewhat mitigated by the fact that it’s almost certainly a concession they had to make in order to get the rights.

No thoughts. They likely had to negotiate for those rights. It is funny to see how much was paid for Beatles and what a big deal everyone (including Pachter) made of it, and the market doesn’t give a care. Most gamers didn’t grow up with the Beatles anyway.

3. What do you make of its sales performance in England (where it didn’t even debut at #1)? I’m sure it’s selling plenty of copies both here, there, and everywhere in between, but this is a rather surprising development; I had figured it would be lodged at the top of the charts until Modern Warfare 2 came along in November. My uneducated guess is that sales will pick up as the holidays approach, but I wonder whether the fact that you can’t enjoy the game without owning a game console might limit its value as a gift – I mean, my mom loves the Beatles but this product is of passing interest to her at best since she doesn’t own any of the systems.

Thanks for your time

People like variety in their music games. Having all the music by the same artist means that demand for the game is not just based on those who like music games but on those who like that band.

Instead of expanding the product’s reach, they decreased it. In order to like this product, you must…

A) Like music games.

B) Like Beatles music.

I think that just using Beatles music limited the audience, not grew it.