Posts Tagged ‘Best Buy’

Hey, remember last week when we all rushed out to pre-order the Squier? Yeah, I think we’re going to have to do that again if we want to get a free Best Buy gift card. At least, that’s what their lovely customer service representative told me when I asked him about the new promotion they just started. @Felder71 let me know that Best Buy is now offering a $25 gift card to pre-orders, so long as you add the special $25 promotional gift card to your cart upon ordering… in other words, you probably didn’t do that. The $25 gift card would be a nice little discount to place towards the MIDI Pro-Adapter that is necessary to connect the guitar with the game.

And whether this affects the month-long estimated arrival date that Best Buy is feeding those that pre-ordered remains to be seen. I also asked the Best Buy rep what the reason is behind the delay between March 1st (when it’s released), and April 3rd-8th (when pre-orders are currently scheduled to arrive) and he told me that is based upon the supplier’s ability to satisfy the large amount of pre-order demand. While it is possible that there was a phantom underground cabal of rhythm gamers that inundated Best Buy’s pre-order process at 12:01 for the Squiers, I’ve learned my lesson with Best Buy in the past (R.I.P. Circuit City), so I asked to be transferred to someone that could provide more answers, and what do you know, he had already left for the day! (Woe is the the grueling demands of the Best Buy logistics department!)

The best we can do at this point is pre-order and hope the Squiers are not shipped via Pony Express as currently scheduled.

[Best Buy Squier $25 Promo]

Some of you may have heard that Best Buy stores are beginning to set up Rock Band 3 demo stations with Squier guitars.  Naturally, I went to my local Best Buy yesterday after learning about that and luck would have it, the employees were finishing connecting the Squier as I walked in.  These demos seem to be taking place in the Musical Instruments Store within the Best Buy, so check to see if your local store has one.  So far, via the Rock Band forums, Squiers have been spotted in Springfield, Missouri and Santa Rosa, California.

I’ve had a fair amount of experience with the Mustang so far, having had one for about a month now, so I approached the demo with the intent to get a grasp on how the Squier felt compared to the Mustang and also compared to my Fender Stratocaster, rather than just play it to play the game.

• The Squier has good action.  It’s not the best, and I’m not saying that negatively, it’s just not like my uncle’s Gibson where you can fret strings just by looking at them.  The action’s about as good as my Fender brand Stratocaster, if not slightly better.  I had no problems with fretting anything, even barre chords.
• Due to how the electronics register fret-detection, if you bend strings too much, you may get them to register as fretting on the wrong string.  Something like an accidental half-bend may make it think you’re playing on the very edge of the adjacent string’s “zone,” rather than the one you’re actually on.
• The string mute is a necessity from a game standpoint for the most part.  Without it, you run a fairly high risk of detecting multiple strums due to the high vibration.  Throw on ‘No Fail’ and you could play along without the mute active if you wanted to plug into an amp and play the game at the same time, you’re just going to be thought to be overstrumming a lot.
• The string mute isn’t intrusive when active.  It’s just a small piece of plastic with some kind of fabric on top.  It gently rests against the strings, and doesn’t lock them into place at that point or aggressively press against them with a lot of force.
• If you don’t have the string mute active, I had noticed it’s possible to get some weirdness if you don’t play with a pick.  When strumming with your thumb, everyone I know plays by pushing the strings toward the body of the guitar a little and then sliding down toward the floor, and the pushing toward the body motion was enough to make the game think the strings were being fretted on the 22nd fret.  It didn’t seem to interfere with gameplay, but it would be something to be aware of.  If anything, it made me confused and unable to watch anything else, so it would be incredibly distracting to see 22s pop up everywhere while playing (the guy who set up the demo station was playing like this).
• The faceplate buttons worked on the 360 model (the Fender site says that you have to use the MIDI adapter’s buttons).
• It has a tilt sensor to activate overdrive with.  You don’t need to reach for the button on the MIDI adapter.  The “back” button also works for overdrive.
• It’s easier to move around on the neck compared to the Mustang.  The plastic button-frets of the Mustang have more resistance to your fingers’ movements, and the Squier’s strings are definitely more accommodating to having to move around quickly.  The 5>7>12 transitions in “The Con” were much easier on the Squier, and I actually overshot a lot in the first few passes, sliding all the way down to 15 by accidentally using as much force to slide as I was used to with the Mustang.
• Strings were both easier to differentiate between and also strum in the faster patterns than with the Mustang.
• Strumming the strings produces a fair amount of noise.  They are real strings after all, and even with the mute in place, you will hear them if you don’t play with headphones.  It’s kind of like the Mustang, but higher pitch from having more tension in the strings.
• Everything I had learned on the Mustang immediately transferred over to the Squier – with the exception of having to play in a different environment with different calibration and at a slightly different angle from a not-very-good guitar strap.  There was no point at which I had to think “this doesn’t feel right” or “this is different than what I’m used to.”
• The only thing I’m unsure of is how it sounds from an amp, but the Best Buy I went to had headphone setups that I could plug a guitar into, so I plan on going back in the near future to see if I can coax the employees into letting me take the Squier away from the demo and hook it up to play with outside of the game for a little bit.

Overall, I’m very impressed with the Squier, and glad I was able to play with it after having put in so much time with the Mustang.  It was a good experience to already have some songs memorized and know large parts of others and just be able to play with the instrument rather than have to learn at the same time when seeing how it felt.  Playing on strings isn’t something foreign to me, so I didn’t feel too uncomfortable with it, in fact I didn’t have any discomfort until playing the barred 6′s with my pinky in “The Beautiful People”.  I also managed to cut my index finger on my strumming hand thanks to the guitar strap being weird and keeping the guitar in a more dramatic angle toward my body than I’m used to, where strumming downward meant strumming my finger down and straight into the thinner strings a few hundred times, even while using a pick I brought from home – but that’s not a fault of the guitar.

I played around in the demo area for a little over an hour, going through a lot of the easier songs I have memorized (and unlocking about 20 of their pro guitar goals on that machine), and the response from other people was incredibly positive.  I had about a dozen people ask me questions directly and plenty more just standing around watching for a little while as they came into that section of the store, or just in awe asking “are you playing that game with that guitar!?“  Lots of people seemed interested in it, and even remarked that “this is how it should have been from the start.”  One of the coolest things about the setup was that it was full real instruments – they had a Roland drum kit set up as well as a Roland keyboard, both hooked up for the game sitting next to the Squier.

If you have a Best Buy near you that has a Musical Instruments Store inside, I definitely urge you to check it out to see if they’ve got a Squier set up in there if you get the chance.  I’m personally still on the fence about purchasing one, but that’s purely from the standpoint of not having the extra money right now and also already owning both a Mustang and a real guitar.  If I had the extra cash I’d have placed a preorder when I returned from Best Buy, and wouldn’t think it a wasted gift if someone wanted to buy one for me.  For anybody with no real guitar experience or that doesn’t already own a real guitar, the Squier looks like it would be a fantastic investment.

According to a post just made over at Joystiq, it appears that Best Buy now has EXCLUSIVE rights to sell the Fender Squier. The press release received by Joystiq from Best Buy was brief, so no further details are known at this time, such as availability outside the United States. I’m expecting more details from Harmonix about this in the near future, and I’ll update here if I find out more.

UPDATE: As expected, HMXHenry posted on the official forums letting us know that the exclusivity for the Squier at launch only relates to the US, and that the guitar will be available at other retailers shortly after launch. (Thanks, @PKSage!)

And if you are interested in purchasing a Squier, remember that the pre-sales start tomorrow at Best Buy, both online and in the store.

[Thanks, Josh!]

Fender has already announced that they will be opening pre-sales for the Fender Squier Pro-Guitar on January 1st, 2011, and be available on March st, 2011. Now according to Joystiq, Best Buy will be selling starting pre-orders for the Fender Squier starting on December 15th, or 8 days from today! Joystiq mentioned that Best Buy was able to set up an exclusivity arrangement with Fender, and if you ask me, this is a smart move. This news is sure to excite many a Rock Band fan for the forthcoming holidays!

You will be able to place orders for the Squier, both in-store and online, starting December 15th.

UPDATE: Apparently, Best Buy will be taking pre-orders for the Squier starting December 15th, with a still unannounced release date. D’oh.

[Joystiq]

Despite various reports to the contrary, the Mustang Pro Guitar is available in some places. Granted, I personally still can’t get my hands on it, but some people out there certainly have. How do we know? Well, if a picture is worth a thousand words, I think this post speaks volumes. Rock Band 3 fan @JasonHocker sent me this pics of a Mustang he picked up at his local Best Buy (NOT online). While I won’t deny that there may be some distribution issues with the hardware (I still don’t have a keyboard yet, either), rest assured that peripherals ARE coming. Until then, Rock Band 3 definitely offers enough to keep you busy until your shiny new controllers show up.

I should have posted this earlier in the week, but Xbox 360 owners still have today and tomorrow to get some great deals.  Best Buy is running a promo that if you buy one game at full price, you can get a second of equal or lesser value at 50% off, and also includes free shipping! It’s not only games, but also includes some gear as well.  It appeasr that the promo runs through the end of this Saturday for Xbox 360, and rumor has it that next week PS3 owners should get similar treatement.  Wii the week after, maybe?

I looked through all the available items, and here are the Rock Band related items that are eligible for the current Xbox 360 promo:

• Rock Band 2 – $49.99
• Mad Catz – Rock Band 2 Triple Cymbal Pack – $39.99
• Rock Band Country Track Pack – $29.99
  
• Rock Band Classic Rock Track Pack – $29.99
  
• Mad Catz – Rock Band Fender Precision Bass – $69.99
• The Beatles: Rock Band game – $59.99 (starting next week, I guess the promo excludes pre-orders… sorry Xbox 360 owners)
• The Beatles: Rock Band limited edition bundle – $249.99 (see above)
• The Beatles: Rock Band special value edition – $139.99

[Best Buy buy one, get one 50% off]