Obviously, the team behind Rock Band really looked at how people play Guitar Hero
Harmonix made GH1 and GH2. Harmonix developed Rock Band. So they've had some iterations to get it right. The publisher of those GH games, Red Octane, got bought out by Activision and so now the Activision-owned developer Neversoft makes the GH games from GH3 on. GH3 was their first attempt, which is barely more than a GH2-clone with new songs, and a few tweaks. We can only go up from here, presumably.
I think one of the most outstanding things Harmonix had done with Rock Band was to let you
earn star-power while
using star-power. As little of a tweak that that is, it actually makes a huge difference on your potential scoring, and whether or not you make it through tough parts of songs. I also like that I can earn in-game cash in career mode for songs that I have downloaded, as you pointed out.
I own GH2, GH3, and Rockband, all for the 360. I think that Rockband and GH can co-exist. First, as long as there is competition, gamers get better games. But besides that, here's why I think they can co-exist:
RockBandIn my opinion, Rock Band was developed out of Harmonix's continued frustration at not being able to acquire the rights to songs by artists they really wanted in the game. Part of this problem is that, at least for a GH game, the guitar part has to be the most centric part of the song. Every time they heard a song that they might want to put in the game, they had to then ask themselves if the guitar parts we fun to play, and the most prevalent. After doing that with both GH1 and GH2, they must have at some point came up with the idea to add the other instruments, and thus open the proverbial floodgates for the potential songs. Now when they decide if a song should be in Rock Band they can ask themselves if it has lyrics that are fun to sing. Or they can ask, "is there an amazing drum solo?" Finally, they can continue to ask if there are fun guitar parts in the song. Instead of only concentrating on songs that have "fun" guitar parts, they can go with songs that meet a level of fun on any of the other instruments. They go from guitar-centric songs to band-centric songs. The good thing for them is that, although they can concentrate on songs that meet the "fun" criteria for all the instruments, they can also still pick songs that are really fun for just one instrument (since you can play solo career as just a drummer, or just a singer, etc...)
GHThe whole concept for Guitar Hero was that many of us out there, when we really dig a song, would instictively play "air-guitar" to the amazing guitar solos in our favorite songs. The GH franchise should concentrate on finding and acquiring more songs that meet that criteria. Even though we've had 3 versions of the franchise so far, there are still many songs out there that would be perfect for GH. There are several songs already in the franchise that are better suited to a Rock Band setup, but there are many
examples already in the franchise of the type of songs GH should now be concentrating on. Like my personal favorite from GH2,
The Trooper. But, if you've ever heard anything by
Stevie Ray Vaughan, you know what I mean. You can't help but jam to his riffs. Heck, they could make an entire game with his songs (instead of
Aerosmith!). The point is, IMHO, GH would be amazing if it turned into the type of game that is loaded with "air-guitar" inducing songs. As it is, they're just trying to keep up with the songs that are included in Rock Band. Having only guitar-specific songs in your game might seem like a niche market (it won't be if you do it right), but if you instead use mostly band-centric songs (like those in Rock Band), but only allow users to play them on the guitar, then customers are going to find that Rock Band is the better deal every time.
Just my 2bc,
~Charles
