Arcade Version HMX?

[monstrado]

HMX, do you guys have plans of migrating Rock Band over to a familiar arcade style of play?

50 cents per instrument, 1 song or w/e the case may be.

I'm sure these arcade systems would draw some serious attention, and some serious $$

[Guitarplayer777]

i used to think this would be cool for guitar hero. but, since i'm buying it, it's probably useless. Arcade games are a dying breed anyway. sorry.

[AdamWill]

i used to think this would be cool for guitar hero. but, since i'm buying it, it's probably useless. Arcade games are a dying breed anyway. sorry.

That depends where you are. Try going somewhere with a big Chinese or Japanese population; arcades do just fine. Here in Vancouver (well, the GVA) we have four or five big, popular arcades with tons of recent Japanese imports (Initial D, Wangan Maximum Tune, all Bemani games etc). But yeah, in the typical whitebread American town, arcades are dying.

[Guitarplayer777]

That depends where you are. Try going somewhere with a big Chinese or Japanese population; arcades do just fine. Here in Vancouver (well, the GVA) we have four or five big, popular arcades with tons of recent Japanese imports (Initial D, Wangan Maximum Tune, all Bemani games etc). But yeah, in the typical whitebread American town, arcades are dying.

how'd you figure out where i live? And sorry, i did forget about the bigger cities.

[AdamWill]

I'm guessing =) Well, if you lived somewhere arcades are still popular, you wouldn't have made a post like that, I guess.

Vancouver isn't that big (only a couple of million people in the GVA) but the Chinese population is massive and there's quite a few Japanese too, which is why arcades are so popular here.

I don't think Harmonix would be that interested in an arcade Rock Band, though. Their demographic is more likely to be interested in console play than arcade. They would also need to find a big arcade publisher to handle it, and the obvious one - Konami / Bemani - has its own horse in that particular race =) I guess they could work with the publishers of the DDR clones out there, but yeah, I don't think it's something they'd care about that much.

[monstrado]

These systems don't have to be placed in Arcades, they can go into bars / food places etc.

HMX will just have to custom make the controllers so their a little more durable for public use.

[milesodanglers]

HMX, do you guys have plans of migrating Rock Band over to a familiar arcade style of play?

50 cents per instrument, 1 song or w/e the case may be.

I'm sure these arcade systems would draw some serious attention, and some serious $$

well i work for a vending machine company, and we deal with arcade games. One big fact that i have seen in the past few years is that arcade games are basically gone, most companies are not making new versions of arcade games except for like ddr versions of arcade games, and larger games for larger arcades like on a boardwalk or something like that. kids dont go down to the local arcade and play games all day and spend their money there, because they have xbox and playstation and such. I have however seen a version of guitar hero in an arcade on the seaside heights boardwalk in new jersey, i assume this is an illegal machine, and was probably put together by someone, and the way it works is that you put a dollar in and you get to play the game for a certain amount of time, in essence it works on a timer, so it probably would be possible for a rock band arcade game, but highly unlikely it would happen.

[admanimal]

Doesn't Konami already have a pretty good hold on this type of game in the arcades with Guitar Freaks and Drummania? (yes I know each instrument has a separate game, but still..)

[AdamWill]

yes, that's what my Konami / Bemani reference was. =) (GF and DM cabinets can be linked for a session mode, they're usually sold in pairs, and they use almost identical song lists, so they're really closer to being one game than two). But there's enough room in the market for three different varieties of DDR ripoff and four or five varieties of IIDX / Popn ripoff, so there'd be room for another guitar / drum game most likely. (There is actually a drumming game which uses a real drum kit, called Doogi Doogi, but that's only in...I think it's Korea...for now). GH / RB have a somewhat different feel from GF/DM, too, they're less hardcore and have somewhat different styles of music (though the 'GF/DM is all j-pop!' cliche is a bit overstated).

The other thing is that Konami does not market (or even sell) GF/DM outside of Asia. They're currently running a location test in one arcade in the States, but that's all. All the GF/DM machines outside Asia are grey imports, and it takes a dedicated arcade owner with decent connections in Asia to set that up. So there *would* be space if someone wanted to do 'RB: The Arcade Game', I just don't think it'd happen.