Activision sticking to GH II DLC pricing

I see one reason why the could be having a great success, the fact that their GH1 tracks. Seeing as how a large amount of GH2 owners may be GH1 fans, they like those songs. Also anyone new to GH may just like the fact their from the same series. Think if Red Octane came out with new songs, sure it'd be nice but no one would know what to expect and maybe not always like that choice. I'm not a fan of the price but I don't see it as a problem for alot of people(obviously proven with those stats).

I'm interested in seeing how Rock Band's songs are going to be priced.

Consumers justified their pricing. Rock Band's stuff will probably be even more expensive than these, as they'll be programmed for 4 instead of 1. Suckas!

If we assume that there are only 600,000 players (as per the leaderboard; we'll not go into those w/o Live for the moment), and 4 DLC packs available to each, we have a possible total of 2.4 million downloads. To have only 300,000 (or 12.5%) says to me that the consumer on the whole isn't buying any of this (pun intended).

Seriously. Enough bitching already. Microsoft isn't a flea market, X3F, and your bitching and moaning and boycotting of the songs will do nothing to change their price. It's a good deal. It makes fiscal sense to the companies involved and the majority of people actually bought them. I'm really tired of hearing this site, (and it's really only this one) bitch and moan because everynow and again Major throws you guys a bone, and therefore, you think you can change a huge corporation with just a little homegrown petition effort...GET REAL and STOP COMPLAINING...that shit only hardly works in politics, and occasionly, bringing back TV shows.

Hi I'm burgerbat and X3F is the only site that complains about this pricing.

That's because I don't read Kotaku, Joystiq, xbox.com forums, or Guitar Hero forums, 1up, Penny Arcade, etc.

I also don't check out digg.com either.

I've purchased all of the song packs, and I don't feel bad about it at all. Sure, the pricing scheme doesn't quite match up to what you get when you're buying a whole game, but in my oft-flamed opinion, the convenience of being able to just download the tracks and the option to be choosy is worth it. $2 a song ain't so bad. It's double what you pay for a song on iTunes, and to me, it's worth many times more. The only gripe I have is that they haven't released quite as many packs as they had us believe they would.

I don't have a problem with the pricing. iTunes tracks are 99 cents apiece, so that makes $3. Toss in some development and distribution costs of $2 and I think that is a fair deal

Activision is either really dumb or they feel gamers are.
They sold almost 300,000 units of the game(retail) the first month it came out, and a good amount since then. From reading the boards about this issue I've noticed that most of the sheep who supported this price purchased all of the packs. Most likely of the 300,000 downloads, only 150,000 actual different customers if not less.
Now at a lower price I'm willing to bet that sales would soar.
But as E3 showed us the game industry has gone the way of the music and movie industries, all about the money and screw the consumer.
It took them over three months to make some sort of comment about this and this is the best they could do. At least try and pull an MS and blame someone else.

Ya know....how many people have bought ring tones for their cell phones. I would venture to guess that most people have bought some. Athough I could be wrong. Ring tones cost like 3-4 dollars and all you get is a crappy sounding 30 second snippet of a song.

At least with these you're getting a great sounding full INTERACTIVE song. I bought the other packs and will probably buy this one.

If Rock Band has cheaper songs it will only be because it's MTV and they'll probably get better liscensing deals.

As always if you think it's too much then just don't buy it.

hmmm
800,000 units sold of GH2 on Xbox360
800,000 X 4 (the total number of pack available) = 3.2 million

300,000/3,200,000 = .09375 or 9.375%

At 9.4% of total downloads for the game being bought by the consumer is considered a success?

Note: not sure how many copies of GH2 have sold... though I thought I saw 750K somewhere a while ago but couldnt seem to find them when I looked today. so my numbers may be way wrong.

I might be willing to pay this price for new, master recordings that I get to choose rather than packing in 3 totally different genre of songs. But charging this price for a cover that has already been included in an older game is completely outrageous. Oh, I was never planning on downloading the GH1 tracks to begin with unless they were given to me for free.

@5 you are stupid...if you don't like using your first amendment or that other people do why dont you go read about Jack Thompson on Fox news.

The thing is, Joshua, is that all the sites you named rip off one another. Half the time they don't bother to write a new entry or change the clever picture that accompanies every article. So does it suprise me their all bitching? No. Is there an original thought on X3F ever? No. Is it the same group of whiners bitching on every site? Probably. Now that that is cleared up, I think the ring tone argument is the best I've heard. You are getting an interactive, built-from-the-ground up-for-your-enjoyment track pack of classic songs. So yeah, maybe you don't think it's worth it. But for me, someone who actually enjoys the songs on every track pack, it's pretty good deal. And considering not everyone who bought GH2 has Live or internet or even knows how to navigate the 360 to the marketplace. A friend of mine just bought GH2 and a 360, and she has no idea on how to get the sucker online. But she'd buy the songs if she knew, I'm sure. So that millions bought the game but only 300,000 bought the tracks is either really good, or kinda good, but most certainly not bad.

Plus, Jack Thompson is my father.

You're getting a full interactive COVER of a real song. People who ran out and bought GHII like the game and the idea behind the game. If they offer the packs at a more reasonable rate (reasonable in the eyes of a large portion of vocal consumers X3F, Digg, etc), that

Ok, full post didn't go through . . .

You're getting a full interactive COVER of a real song. People who ran out and bought GHII like the game and the idea behind the game. If they offer the packs at a more reasonable rate (reasonable in the eyes of a large portion of vocal consumers X3F, Digg, etc), that

wtf, i don't know what i did to anger it, but i don't want to type it again.
Just assume I made some really great points and everyone should agree with me.

When I think of an iTunes song being $1 and these being basically $2... it doesn't seem that terrible for me. It's not like cover songs on iTunes are sold at a lower price either. Making these things 5.1 and adding the bass lines that weren't present in the PS2 version isn't just something that you do by flicking a switch.

That said, I really wish I could pick songs individually or something. The way the packs are sorted is terrible.

There is still no defense for the argument that they'd NEVER be able to do this on a retail disc for people that have no Live access...

"Hey, don't have Live access? Buy all the downloadable content for GH2 on this disc for $100+!!!"

There would be riots at the retail stores!

Burgerbat, you're all messed up in your thinking.

Check out puffin's stats in Comment #11, and you'll see that Activision's "success" isn't that much of a success, at least in my eyes.

Also, there are 62 PAGES of comments on ONE THREAD regarding people's displeasure with the DLC on the main Guitar Hero forum.

http://forum.guitarherogame.com/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=18409

That's not copied "drivel", that's people that really believe that they were told it would be one way ("downloads will be about the same pricing as iTunes") and given another.

If RO wants us to believe this Horse SH*T that OK, I know that I'm buying Rock Bamd and NOT GHIII. So I hope they can sleep at night!!
I'm sure Hermonix has been reading what the fan's are saying and expect them not to make the same mistake!! RB here I come!!

Having 20 people reply on the X3F blog is not a "vocal majority." The people who read this blog and others, inluding myself, are typically the more elite gamers who want to know every bit of new information and details. The MAJORITY are the rest of the people who have a 360 and buy content regularly and often. Numbers don't lie. Even if 2,000 signed a petition not to buy the DLC it's a drop in the bucket compared to the number of people who own the game and are buying the DLC.

I must confess, I bought DLC pack 4 (smoke on the water one) and I feel I sold my soul to the devil, but I just couldn't resist that I sold my morals for the fee of 6.25$ for 3 songs....

That comparison to itunes is not any good, Apple sells very crappy sounding music at a very high premium; get a good set of headphones and listen to a cd and then listen to the crappy itunes compressed crap, hell, you just need the crappy headphones that come with the overpriced, mediocre mp3 player that is ipod (yes, I know some of you will be offended but you also know Apple is ripping you off). A mediocre product at a premium price.

Now the GHII songs, if you don't like the pricing simply don't buy. I don't like the pricing so I'm not buying. RedOctane just said the GHII community will pay as much as they want us to pay (just like Apple) basically calling the whole GHII community idiots. Right now, by reading some comments both on this thread and the RedOctane thread, I believe they are certainly right.

Sorry, I bought that Donna's song because I get a kick out of my wife playing it to a song about a chick singing about getting naked....

Hey how about making a link to Somewhere Mrs. Dusty Welch of Red Octane publishing can and will read?

I almost bought the new song pack when I was shit faced drunk, but even in that state could not bring myself to spend that kind of money on these songs no matter how bad I want them. Its not like I cant afford them but, U guys that bought them thanks, because you are paving the way for over priced DL content. They've got the taste of our blood now, and they'll never loose that sent.

nobody has brought up the fact that these songs were ALREADY MADE long before guitar hero 2 came out, virtually zero work has to go into making them since they were already planned and game-ified. If it was a new song that actually took work to make like with new note layout and such, then paying their prices wouldn't be so bad, and now i expect them to release some 80s songs since 80s is ps2 exclusive as well. nothing original for the poor 360 owners...

@28
Actaully, a bit of work has been put into these somgs guy. Im completly against the price but that fact is, the work IS there.

A) These songs are from GH1 but, now they play using the newly revamped hammer on and pull off system which is a massive improvment from GH1.

B)U can now take these songs and check them out in the practice mode. Something that just didnt exist in GH1, this means perfecting those solos in a song like Bark At the Moon on Expert.

Thats about it though outside of them being on GH2 for 360 and posting scores online.

I'm not wasting a bunch of points for 1 good song packed with two crappy ones...

I'll save mine for METALLICA downloads with ROCK BAND...

I feel that the pricing is more than it should be (why didn't they bundle songs together in bigger packs and sell them for less overall?), but as someone who's already beaten all the songs on GH2 and doesn't own a PS2 to play the original, I want more songs.

A mass campaign to get the pricing changed through not buying the song packs is retarded when there is demand for more Guitar Hero content. That's like complaining about the extortionate price of 360 games in general ($59.99 is a shitload of cash for a game no matter which way you spin it) and telling everyone not to buy any games until the price comes down. In theory, that would work, but how many people want to buy a console and sit there with no games until people power forces the cost down?

@31

I dont know the answer to that question son.
It is something that would be better answered on the ps3 fanboy site.

@29: I'm faily certain they're mastered for 5.1 now as well (although, I'm led to beleive they don't sound so great on 2.0 anymore)

That aside, I've bought all 4 packs, and I'll buy more - I'll even buy GHIII and Rock Band. But please, can we have some more content? At least give us all of GH1 and perhaps the 80's. If Activision really wants to show some good faith, they'll let the DLC work in GHIII when we get our hands on it.

hate to say I told you so --

http://xbox.joystiq.com/2007/07/11/they-didnt-listen-new-gh-ii-tracks-still-500-points/#comments

6. I would be willing to wager the that these new songs are priced the same as the last ones is because many people bought the last ones , even at the high prices.

If people stop paying these prices, then you will see a drop.

Posted at 1:02PM on Jul 11th 2007 by xenocidic

I still can't believe that anyone complains about songs costing roughly twice what they do on iTunes, etc. Sure, it's $2/song or whatever. For that, you get the song itself, plus the programs for easy, medium, hard, and expert, in both single and multiplayer. Song for $1, eight programmed patterns for $1. Seems fine to me.

I figure that there is some expense involved in licensing the songs, and probably some more expense in developing and testing the patterns. Sure, greedy old Activision may turn a profit of $0.50 (or even $0.75!) per song sold, but whatever. Fine by me.

If something costs more than it is worth to you, don't buy it. But whining that something costs more than it is "worth" in some nebulous objective way is just silly.

Just one point I thought needed to be made:
If a PS2 owner bought Guitar Hero 2 and a guitar controller, it'd be, what, 80 bucks? And if they wanted all of the GHI songs, they'd have to go out and spend, what, $50? It makes sense. The company had to put work into making these songs and putting them online. Just shut the hell up about it already. If you don't want to buy it, just don't buy it.