To Open Guitar Hero
I’ll give my wife credit for 80% of this one.
Guitar Hero III is a great game. It’s gotten tons on mileage at our house and no one has even beaten the hard level yet. However, the promise of downloadable content (DLC) has had us waiting for the opportunity to buy more songs. So far, for the Wii, the promise is unfulfilled.
(As an aside I believe that the low memory of the Wii and the lack of a hard drive is the culprit blocking DLC.)
Anyway…remember Quake? It managed to stay relevant for years because the manufacturer released level editing software and directions. People from all over wrote their own levels and released them for free on the Internet.
Could something similar happen for Guitar Hero? You take the tracks from songs, map out the notes onto the four difficulties and share your creation with the world, or sell it for a nominal fee. It would be cool.
Except that it probably won’t happen. While the current environment in music copyright is improving, gaining access to a song and then reselling it as a Guitar Hero track is probably way too much for the music industry to handle…for now.
However, independent artists may find such a scheme advantageous. They get free promotion of their music, which could potentially be downloaded by millions of people. Those people could turn into fans who download thousands of “regular” MP3 versions of the track.
Of course, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft would have to adopt a model that enables user-created downloadable content. Qualcomm did this somewhat successfully with BREW applications on cell phones and the revenue-sharing model could be similar.
Anybody? Buehler?