Monday, May 17, 2010

Uh-Oh

This  is a problem:
MTV Games boss Scott Guthrie has indicated that he expects Green Day: Rock Band to sell more than The Beatles: Rock Band.

..."Our core audience of 16 to 34-year-old males are much more familiar with Green Day music than The Beatles."


"Green Day probably has a much higher awareness than perhaps The Beatles did."
First off, if Green Day outsells The Beatles, I'm going to stab myself. That's just a personal aside.
 
Second, this seems typical of MTV, setting up totally unrealistic sales expectations for any Rock Band product. They're releasing this as a $60 product, which is an incredibly unrealistic price point, and then, when the game doesn't sell to projections, they're going to blame Harmonix instead of their own ridiculous assumptions.
 
I like Green Day, and it's true that the core demographic is probably more familiar with the music than they were with the music of The Beatles, but The Beatles was a masterpiece of a game. That it didn't sell better is a hard truth about the state of the genre, not the music of The Beatles.
 
Given how the little plastic instrument genre has been doing in the last year, trying to release a full-price game for any band whose name doesn't begin with "L" is just stupid.

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