Results of Rock Band 3 DLC Poll
Wow, you guys came out in force to respond to the DLC poll I had last week. There were well over 1,000 respondents to each question! While PollDaddy isn’t technically the most scientific of polling efforts, based on my limited understanding of quantitative methods, over 1,000 people responding has to be worth something!
Below lie the results of each question below along with my brief analysis and commentary.
Out of all the questions, I think this one send the biggest message to Harmonix. I have one caveat, and one word of caution, however. First of all, the results here should not surprise anyone, as this poll was hosted on a site that is frequented by Rock Band fans. It’s kind of a given that Rock Band fans that have a lot of DLC would want to get more mileage and a “refresher” out of their current library of music. My word of caution is related to the results of the following question…
OK, so according to this, over 40% of the respondents want more DLC, but don’t want to pay for it. As much as I like free stuff, this is not something that I would expect a for-profit business to do. While some people will act insulted that Harmonix would charge them for an upgrade to currently existing DLC, there’s a cost associated with the upgrade, one that a company is obviously expected to pass on to its customers. I’ll elaborate more on this after the final question.
While the past two weeks of DLC have not exactly been the core fans’ favorites, there is still a percentage of you that are not willing to pick up DLC until Rock Band 3 is released. Personally, I think this is silly, and I honestly call some of you out on this. If your favorite song is released as DLC, I highly doubt you will refuse to buy it based on principle. Just imagine if Muse DLC comes out!
We’re coming up on 1,500 songs in the Rock Band library, that (with a few exceptions) currently have four instruments on four difficulties, or roughly 16 charts to author for each song. Even if we exclude the additional work in charting for harmonies, with the new Pro features and addition of a keyboard instrument, DLC songs will now have FIVE instruments across four difficulties in TWO different modes, or 40 charts to complete. This 2.5 times the amount of work Harmonix is currently outputting! If you apply the increase in production to the price, we could expect to be paying $5.00 per song, which I don’t think there’s even a remote chance of happening. Frankly, if you choose $.99 you should be ashamed of yourselves. And I don’t think the price will be $3.99… you guys would riot. However, I don’t think $2.99 is out of the realm of possibility based on the amount of work going into the songs, but I do agree with the majority of you that the current price point of $1.99 will probably stay where it is. The community has gotten comfortable with the price, and as the franchise matures and evolves, I think the price point helps maximize the revenue generated for DLC. An increase in the price probably wouldn’t cover the amount of people that would be chased away.
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A few things.
One, there’s no difference between Legacy Drum and Pro Drum charts, so a few less charts.
Also, vocals is only one chart with a tighter hitbox, so there’s one Legacy and one Harmonies.
Finally, DLC dropped in price from Guitar Hero II to Rock Band, and has maintained the same price whether the chart is Polly on drums or Constant Motion on guitar. Raising the price for charts would be a good guess if it had worked the same for length.
That’s alot of people…
What’s the signifcance of the horse?
Kirksplosion Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Just Google “Oblivion Horse Armor”
ComplicitOwl Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
It’s Oblivion. It’s ‘Horse Armor’, which is notorious as the head of all pointless DLC. Not only are there a ton of horses to steal/buy/ride in the game, they let you spend a few bucks giving it some added protection with that.
Look at it this way – if they hike the price at all it’ll be, if anything, on par with Guitar Hero’s current pricing. And you get less for that, so people really have no right to whinge if pricing goes up a bit.
Personally? Not too bothered if the price goes up a bit. As long as it means I can jam out the organ solo on Highway Star.
ComplicitOwl Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Old DLC won’t be updated. The contract has to specify how the song is played, so they’d need to relicense.
Ben Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
They’ve obviously been working on this for a while and knew it was coming though so I wouldn’t be surprised if they licensed a lot of DLC to cover Pro mode as well, should they choose to go back and add the new charts.
I think previously owned DLC can be upgraded at the consumer’s choice. Pay something like 8 dollars for 10 songs to be upgraded, rather than a huge amount for all DLC.
Well, it is known that the vocals are made in 1 chart only, so we go from 16 to 13 here as a start.
Granted, we’ll have 4 more difficulty levels for standard keyboard, so we’re right now at 17.
But what we still don’t know is how the pro modes would be charted. I do think it is possible that, considering the information given about pro guitar in which easy would not have chords and so on, that you only need 1 tab for it and it will create the 4 charts.
This is a POSSIBILITY, and thus should not be tossed aside.
I agree this would anyway make the price go up, but I don’t think they’ll be doing this.
Anyway, if what I think is correct, we’d have:
4 charts for Standard Guitar,
4 charts for Standard Bass,
4 charts for Standard Drums (possibly the same used for pro, but with hardcoded changes on how to read it),
4 charts for Standard Keys,
1 chart for Pro Guitar,
1 chart for Pro Bass,
1 chart for Pro Keys,
1 (possibly 2) chart for Vocal (harmonies and solo).
Giving us a total of 20 charts.
BUT, this could also mean less work in the animations for each instrument, as they may use the tab itself as a guide for how the characters would move.
I’m not saying this is what will happen) that the biggest work they’ll be doing will be really on Standard Keys, and that the (also possible) less work done in the animations may compensate for it.
It is, therefore POSSIBLE (keyword
Ryan Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
I think the Pro Mode goes from Easy to Expert as well. I may be wrong on this, so don’t quote me.
RockBandAide Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
No, you’re correct.
Croq Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
I would be willing to bet my next paycheck that for the current “standard” tracks, they chart the expert levels and then software does most of the work of getting it to hard, medium, and easy. So, realistically, that’s basically 1 chart each plus maybe some extra tweaking work. I would assume the same thing could be done for keys. I would assume that the pro modes will be much the same.
RockBandAide Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
You’re mostly correct about the standard DLC, but I asked specifically at E3 about authoring the Pro charts, and it’s MUCH more difficult than standard authoring. You can’t just “remove” notes from Expert charts based on the way the guitar tablature progresses within the game.
fiShyfiSh Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
I think the price point of $2.99 (240 points) is a very good price point for what essentially covers in my opinion everything we want. Here’s why:
We currently pay $1.99 (160ms points) and highly demanding retroactive upgrdes so, increase price to $2.99 is considered acceptable. With this the accepted price point to upgrade current DLC then we would accept this price for all future DLC with this included post RB3.
I think this could be pretty easily achieved without disturption, with an option to “upgrade DLC for 80points” per song basis, or buy any dlc at 240ms points price with the support added.
The only problem I see is that unless it can be setup in a way that it can be compatible online for say Fred who has upgraded song vs Joe who has not upgraded, then it would essentially be 2 seperate songs, ver1(standard) and ver2(pro/harmonies/keys).
Its a massive task, considering the library of songs available, however many songs would be easier than others to fix. From what I understand Harmonies shouldn’t be much harder than regular Vocals to impliment, Keys are not on every song and there are quite alot that have very little key parts, that could be seperated such as Queen songs. Pro Guitar/Bass however is where I believe alot of time and effort is.
If they could just give harmonies and keyboard support in my opinion that would allow a constant group of 7 players to play the majority of your tracks, this would be a very good thing, I don’t think pro guitar on every track is practical, due to the vast amount of songs available.
fiSh
Arcanon Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Pro’s Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert charts would have to be charted separately. Automatic thindowns would get rid of offbeat notes and other such notes that would impede the learning of Easy Pro players, so it’s safe to assume all those would be charted separately. Also, Harmonies and Solo vocals are different charts, play “Holiday” on both Harmonies and Solo and it’s apparent that they’re charted separately.
That adds 10 more charts for a total of 30 charts. Yeesh.
I have my doubts that the price will raise for DLC, and I’m mostly hoping my doubts are right. My poor wallet hurts enough with the DLC price right now, although I happily pay it for songs I love. I do hope they make charts for the old DLC, I’d actually pay to play keyboard for Journey and Queen songs.
SebastianSB Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
There’s not much difference between harmonies and solo vocals, though. All they really do is pick one of the two or three parts and assign that to solo. Even though it’s probably charted separately all they’re really doing is tracing one of the same lines.
Toad3000 Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 7:46 am
I’m not sure that’s the case – I haven’t tried it, but something tells me in Solo mode they would make the sole singer sing all the vocals. Obviously one person can’t sing both melody and harmony at the same time, but quite frequently (as in “Holiday”), the vocalists actually trade off who’s singing lead at different points. I think, for instance, the vocal break in the middle of “Holiday” is charted to the 2nd vocalist in Harmonies mode, but would probably be assigned to the sole vocalist in Solo mode…
I agree with the thought that the price point for DLC in general won’t increase when RB3 is released. Looking back at the DLC released for Guitar Hero II, people were paying 200 MSP ($2.50) for single tracks and 500 MSP ($6.25!) for three packs, and this was for songs with only eight note charts (e/m/h/x for lead/bass or lead/rhythm).
When RB came out, we started getting DLC with roughly double the amount of work put into it at a lower price point. Seems reasonable enough to assume that RB3′s content won’t cost any more than people are used to paying.
I’m not really expecting them to go back and upgrade old DLC, but one thing that would be really neat is if the Rock Band 2 export has full Pro, Keys, and Harmony charts. If they release it as a Green Day/LEGO style download pack using the code on the manual, there’s no reason they can’t spruce it up with the new charts. That might make it easier for people to stomach the inevitable export fee, too.
The price point of DLC has very little to do with how much it costs Harmonix to make, and everything to do with maximising the money *we give them.* HMX took the decision that they would get the most money by charging $2 per song, and logically that should still be the case however much work they have to put into it.
So I expect that new songs will still be $2, and that means if there ever was an upgrade to old content, HMX would have to charge less than that… so probably $1, if they do it on a per-song basis.
I really hope that my favourite songs do get upgraded at some point. For me, though, the more interesting question is what’s going to happen with the RBN?
Upgraded RBN songs day and date with launch is a bit of a pipe dream – but it could be made to happen, admittedly on a per-author basis. Will it? Who knows.
Though there may be more work going into the tracks, I feel that we are at a fair price point now.
I was pretty miffed when iTunes made their sliding scale, since I felt like I was getting cheated for buying music legitimately.
I feel that if RB3 DLC is more expensive we will have an even larger disparaty between DLC-whores and those who have zero DLC. It’s already something like 2k USD to get the whole library…
DLC for players who don’t go Pro likely stays at $1.99, or they risk a PR hit. Most players won’t play Pro, and being required to pay more for DLC would seem like they’re supporting features they won’t use.
I really think they’ll strongly consider multiple price points for DLC. $1.99 for the regular track and an optional Pro add on for $0.99 or $1.99. This strategy also works very nicely with old DLC.
Maybe it’s just wishful thinking (after all, why couldn’t they have also made the $1.99 nonPro version backwards compatible while they’re at it if it’s base + booster?), but that’s the fairy tale I’m believing right now…
Croq Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
I thought I read somewhere that RB3 DLC will not be backward compatible.
DeQ Reply:
June 28th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
It won’t be and I’m wondering why it couldn’t be made so that Rock Band 1 and 2 ignore the additional charts.
They’re basically forcing anyone who buys DLC on a semi regular basis to get the new game. If this wasn’t absolutely unavoidable, I think it’s a rotten idea. People aren’t going to go for higher prices either, because pro mode isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, even amongst super hardcore players. As Sservis said, it “would seem like they’re supporting features they won’t use.” If anything, new DLC should be 1.99 and the smart thing to do would be to put the old stuff on sale.
I doubt songs will ever have multiple price points. All DLC going forward is going to include pro mode, that’s the officially implied reason it’s not compatible with older games.
LoopyChew Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 2:59 am
While it’s a rumor I buy into heartily, it’s still just a rumor until we get a quote from the developers (Giant Bomb’s article never sources their statement).
The one technical hurdle I could foresee being a problem is the keyboard track–RB1 and RB2 didn’t have to deal with an extra audio track for mixing, so there’s your weak point. Everything else could be ignored in theory, given the proper patch.
Toad3000 Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 7:50 am
Oh come on, that’s a silly statement. Anyone who buys DLC on a semi-regular basis IS getting the new game. I defy you to find someone who’s still buying RB DLC and isn’t ready to fork over the $60 for the new game.
DeQ Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Toad, the majority of regular players will get RB3 immediately, myself included. However, when Rock Band 2 came out, there were a surprising amount of holdouts buying DLC and playing it in Rock Band 1 for more than a few months. You can see this on the leaderboards. I’m sure most of those players eventually upgraded but they were able to do so at their leisure. Not so this time.
As someone who’s played guitar and bass for 20+ years and drums for 15, I’m very excited about the whole pro mode thing. However, it’s already expensive enough of a habit to play those instruments. Add to that being a gamer and a fan of a music video game that decided to pump out real instruments to play the game with, I along with others really interested in the pro mode are going to get hit hard in the wallet.
Now I’ve got about 400 DLC now. Would I want all of that in pro mode? Not really. Honestly, there’s about 100 DLC tracks I’d really love to have pro mode on. Now if I have to buy those all over again, at an inflated price, I’m honestly not going to get caught up. If I only had to pay an upgrade fee of a buck, that’s more realistic. I will sure as hell be a lot more picky about the new DLC I pick up if the price is inflated.
I’m guestimating that fender guitar to be around $400 to $500. It’s a squier with a bunch of crap added to it, they can easily charge that at launch and still make a butt load of money on ‘em.
All in all, just with the new game and new peripherals, this hobby is getting to be very, very expensive. The idea of upping the price of DLC and paying to upgrade existing tracks really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Croq Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
I’d be surprised if the Fender guitar is over $300, and disappointed too (because that’s what I was hoping the price would be).
One option you neglected was a flat-rate upgrade pack for all DLC to date, which is something I’d consider much more than a per-song upgrade. Granted, that’s because I’d be a lot pickier about which songs I’d upgrade at a per-song fee than I would at a flat rate.
AnonymousBroccoli Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
The problem with that is that it kind of assumes they will release Pro/RB3 updates for EVERY song. Even if they offer something like “pay $50 and get all Pro updates as we release them”… If The Beatles and Unplugged taught us anything, there’s no guarantee they’ll continue to support the downloads if they’re not making money on it.
I think the best thing for Harmonix to do would be to update the songs from the previous game discs first and offer each as a $5 or $10 upgrade to those who have already purchased the export. That would give the most songs to the most people, with the economies of scale working to everyone’s advantage. If something like that was ready at the launch of Rock Band 3, it would give everyone a good base of Pro songs to work with.
Toad3000 Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 11:17 am
Yeah, this is a good place to start, particularly since it’s the easiest way to do a bulk update (any DLC songs would have to be updated individually, I would imagine). The sad part is, that means an awful lot of songs I don’t necessarily care to have updated or ever play again (particularly from RB2 and Lego RB)
SO, worst case, let’s say the current license wouldn’t cover a “pro” track. This survey seems to indicate that many of us (me too!) would re-buy the “pro” version of CERTAIN songs for $1.99 all over again. I would think that the current licensees would LOVE the opportunity to re-sell some hardcore freaks like us the same song all over again… (The old vinyl->Casette->CD scenario…)
I chose the “boycott”, not so much because I’m angry, but because I’d like to see how the DLC landscape pans out with RB3. I don’t want to buy a bunch of songs now, only to see that I would have gotten better value out of those purchases had I waited a few months.
It does help a little that there hasn’t been much I especially want to download lately. Green Day aside, the most recent non-RBN tune I have is “Again” by Flyleaf, which came out 2 months ago. (I did get some Gufs, though.
)
RockBandAide Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Woo hoo!!! Did you like ‘em?! They just had a big concert here in town on Sunday night. Still want to post pictures/video!
AnonymousBroccoli Reply:
June 30th, 2010 at 12:22 am
I do like “Smile” quite a bit, and I’ve watched/listened to that concert synchronization video a few times. As far as playing, it’s not my favourite. While I’m not one who constantly needs or wants Rush or Dream Theater or 200bpm bass pedal, I still find there’s not a whole lot to do on drums, which is what I play most. Combine that with the song’s length, and… yeah. I’m glad I got it, though, and I’ll certainly play it every once in a while.
The work involved doesn’t translate to cost: the bulk of the cost is still getting the rights to the songs. That’s why bands like Little Fish and Freezepop are only a dollar despite taking the same amount of work as bands like Queen and Metallica.