Kal_el_0724 says:

Hopefully this flies for both Madcatz and Harmonix.

The more money for both of them the better! And hopefully they will be able to extend to the PS3 and Wii in the near future.

RockBandAtlanta.com says:

”people who are still playing Rock Band 2 or Guitar Hero players who haven’t even entered the genre yet.”

That seems like a misquote or mistake, how can Guitar Hero players be considered people have not yet entered the genre.

Anywho, I travel all over the US getting people to play RB at expos, festivals and corporate events.

I am consistently stunned at how many people tell me they’ve never heard of Rock band or Guitar Hero. I can understand if you haven’t played, but to have never heard of them seems like a stretch to me.

Seems like the truth is that the general public is ignorant to most things Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and that only a relatively small percentage of folks have actually tried it and out of that small percentage some of them actually pluck down money.

I hope they do go after GH peeps and people that have never picked it up before.

Croq Reply:
September 20th, 2011 at 5:53 pm

Yeah, I think it should have read like this (emphasis added by me):

”people who are still playing Rock Band 2 or Guitar Hero ***or*** players who haven’t even entered the genre yet.”

Vampire-Jekyll Reply:
September 20th, 2011 at 7:15 pm

Or maybe they meant GH players who have yet to give RB a chance.

smacd Reply:
September 20th, 2011 at 10:28 pm

OR they are implying that if you’re only playing fake plastic guitars, you haven’t entered the genre yet- because RB3 features real life instruments.

Anex Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 11:18 am

Come to Europe. The amount of people who have heard of Rock band is almost nil, though they all know what Guitar Hero is. As an American living in France I found it AMAZING how almost everyone had heard of Rock band! O_o

RockBandAtlanta.com Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 11:28 am

Jealous. What part of France?

Anyway, to be fair French culture in general doesn’t strike me as avid video gamers.

Chess in the park or cafe, maybe, but pretend guitar and drums is a stretch.

Anex Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 11:47 am

The Alsace (north eastern France). And you’re right.. French people aren’t very video game-y.. it’s a sub culture and really hard to find people that share that interest. My own band members call me a geek for playing video games >.>

Some Random Person says:

Dangit (PS3 player). I refuse to buy an Xbox because it is made by Microsoft (personal reasons; I can’t stand Windows/Office/Internet Explorer/basically anything they do), but it keeps looking more and more appealing for Rock Band. RBN? Promotions? Better release schedule? Now if only I hadn’t already invested so much in the PS3 version.

Ah well, I guess I may just cut back on my DLC spending and see how the rest of the year plays out. Of course, that may make PS3 support shrink even more.

A lose-lose situation.

Mars Reply:
September 20th, 2011 at 7:16 pm

Or interested PS3 players could just buy the previous release of RB3. The one that’s been out for nearly a year. Y’know.

Some Random Person Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 8:01 am

Yes, and I bought RB3 and the keyboard the day it was released. My problem is that this is just another case there Rock Band is going to be superior on the Xbox, on top of the existing things. If the re-release goes as planned, there will presumably be bundles of Xbox instruments in all the big retailers, but none for the PS3 or Wii, which lowers the game’s overall visibility is a cross-platform game.

Then again, I guess it is good for people to get the Xbox version, so why even try marketing the other versions?

Mars Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 9:38 am

The re-release only has to be put onto one console, because if it’s marketed right it’ll sell better on the others as well. They must have determined that the 360 is the best console to sell on, probably because it’s cheaper than the PS3 and more DLC-focused than the Wii.

RockBandAide Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 12:04 pm

This is a great point (which was a point I was trying to explain in the original post). If you are trying to sell a product, are you going to go after the smallest customer niche first, or the largest? It makes perfect business sense why they are doing this. If it is successful, then they’ll obviously expand to the other consoles. If not, then they know not to try it with the others.

smacd Reply:
September 20th, 2011 at 10:32 pm

Interesting that you have a problem with Microsoft, when Sony is at LEAST as evil a corporation as Microsoft. Rootkit, anyone? PSN security debacle? As much as I hate Microsoft (and Google, and Apple, etc), they are really the lesser of evils between M$ and $ony. But hey, to each their own. Good luck with that decision though. Personally I chose the 360 because it was supported more by my primary game franchise Rock Band, and there weren’t any console-seller exclusives on the PS3 that interest me (and still aren’t).

Toad3000 Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 7:47 am

True, there are plenty of evil behaviors on both sides of the aisle. For instance, I’m pretty miffed that Sony just made all online PS3 players agree to be left out of class action lawsuits in the future. Not that I’ve ever participated in one before (yay, checks for $2.17), but it’s a terrible precedent.
But I had my PS3 before RB came out, and there was no indication in RB1 that the 360 was the favored platform. By the time that became clear (around launch time for RB2), I was already heavily invested.

Some Random Person Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 7:57 am

I may dislike Sony’s business practices, but in my experience they make consistently good products. Microsoft, on the other hand, has evil business practices AND makes consistently bad products. Windows is the slowest of the Big 3 operating systems, Internet Explorer is ALWAYS behind on support for web standards, Microsoft Office is way to expensive when things like LibreOffice are available for free with the same features, etc.

RockBandAide Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 12:27 pm

I had historically been a Sony fanboy. I had a PS2 and the PS3 was my first current-gen console. Most of my home electronics are Sony, and I’ve actually been to their headquarters in Japan. But in the last decade, it’s clear that they consistently miss the mark with their customers. They rose to prominence by owning the mobile music marketplace with the Walkman, but clearly missed the boat on the digital music revolution. Rather than embrace generally accepted formats in the industry (VHS, MP3, SD memory, etc.), they always push their own proprietary format (Beta, ATRAC, mini-disc, UMD, MemoryStick, Blu-Ray, etc.) so they can retain as much control over the market as possible. Not to mention spying on their customers (rootkit), to a lack of acceptable security procedures (PSN hackers), to their latest class-action negating firmware update, Sony has lost my confidence as a business altogether, regardless of the quality of their products. Anyone can make quality products if they really try, but Sony lacks a comprehensive approach to supporting their products. I’m not promoting Microsoft by any means, but at least they try to foster engagement with their Xbox community through TONS of DLC giveaways, XBoxSupport on Twitter, and supporting indie game development. I still think the PS3 is the best “machine” out of all three consoles, but they really need to take some queues from Xbox in how best to support it and its community.

smacd Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 1:31 pm

I don’t know how I could possibly agree more with this. When this current gen started, I had no plans to get any of them. However I had a pretty poor impression of the first xbox, and referred to the 360 as a “three sucksty”, especially after some friends RROD’d. Sony has long been in the hardware business, unlike Microsoft, and they do make excellent hardware. However you point out a lot of the specific reasons I have a more disgusted view of Sony than Microsoft. Microsoft has never really seemed to be out to screw their customers like Sony has, and they have really been out there trying to form better customer relationships and getting more feedback in the last 5 or 6 years, not just with the Xbox but in their software offerings to. They still miss the mark sometimes, but I see a genuine effort from them they didn’t have through the late 90s and early 00′s. Meanwhile Sony continues trying to stick it to their customers. (And then there is Nintendo. I love Nintendo. But they are inherently a different company and I have little bad to say about them. I’ll always buy Nintendo’s products as long as they continue what they are doing).

Cassie Drake Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 4:49 pm

lol oddly enough, when I was making my first console purchase [I grew up a deprived kid lol], I specifically chose to buy an XBox 360 because even when RB2 had been released [which was around the time I was doing my console research and purchase], I had a feeling that the XBox was being better supported in terms of RB. Three years later and I’m more glad than ever at my choice xD

Andrew (UK) says:

I suggest MadCatz put some effort into marketing RB3 in Europe, particularly my home, the UK. We spent £2.8 billion on gaming last year, £1 billion more than film entertainment, which makes us almost as good customers as the USA but nobody over that side of the pond seems to think of us as a worthwhile market. All of the Rock Band titles are mysterious underdogs to Guitar Hero, which didn’t even get much in the way of television advertising and displays in video game stores, but because it had SOMETHING, it easily emerged the winner. Most people I speak to haven’t heard of Rock Band, and those who do assume it’s an inferior copycat of Guitar Hero and THIS MUST BE RECTIFIED!
Excuse me, rant over

Laire says:

To a certain degree, it makes sense. The 360 trumps Sony’s sales in Rock Band downloads 2-to-1 and Nintendo TEN-to-1. So if you’re going to test the waters, you do it on the console where the stuff sells the best.

The re-release is doomed to fail, though – you can already find the game used for $10 and the instruments new at half-price. Without any incentive included like exclusive downloadable songs, it’s just a gimmick to get the stores to put instruments back on the shelves. And there won’t even BE a drum bundle.

And the fact that the 360 sells more songs means they have the largest established userbase already, giving them a smaller market of people who would actually need to BUY a “bundle game.”

However you spin it, it won’t end well.

Poop McQUe says:

A re-launch wtf???

How about a REMAKKKKEEE with 85 different( and hopefully better) songs, and better graphics…let’s throw a “4 at the end of it too…for the helluvit!

RockBandAide Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 3:05 pm

Because this involves ZERO effort from Harmonix.