Song link to Xbox.com not working

[s0ckMonk3y]

The one thing that really gets me, is that if you get the demo from the website, play the demo, then buy it in game, that doesn't count as a website purchase. I'm willing to bet that a LOT of people do it this way, but it would be harder to track.

^This is me... have always downloaded demos via an external source (rbn releases or dlcquickplay, usually) then played the demo and bought from the menu that pops after the demo ends.

Couple more things:

While I've never been overly bothered by the dlc load time when booting the game...having to sit through it twice simply because I wanted to buy a few more songs is definitely pushing it

Finally, so I can queue regular dlc purchases through the website marketplace, dashboard marketplace, stand-alone RB store or in-game store... RBN songs? only the in-game store...hard to believe this won't impact sales.

[Groudon199]

While I've never been overly bothered by the dlc load time when booting the game...having to sit through it twice simply because I wanted to buy a few more songs is definitely pushing it

If the "Rock Band Music Store" app didn't show RBN songs as "Currently Unavailable," that would be one option you could use to avoid having to allow the game to load your DLC just to buy a couple songs.

[Lord_Mhoram]

It surprises me that the data isn't flawed somehow, but I guess I've always assumed everyone does it my way because it's SO much more convenient to order up demos and songs by pointing and clicking in a web browser than by bumping up and down an in-game list while hunched over my drum controller. Even at home with the game running I get up from the drums and go to the laptop to buy songs.

To look at it another way.

Over 40% (appox) of people that have a next generation console never hook it up the internet - according to the last study done. I also have (worthless) anecdotal evidence to this from working at blockbuster in the past. Most adults that played music games had no clue you could hook the machine up to the internet, much less buy regular DLC online.

Of those that have online connectivity, how many actually buy songs?

Of those that buy songs how many of them come to this message board (or similar ones).

I wonder how many people know about Error420/RBN new releases that don't frequent this board.

Now RBN sales most likely have a higher percentage of people people that fall into the above category than regular DLC or those that just buy the game.

But I can easily see that a really small portion of sales is from the links.

Do I like this - no. I found it really convenient to download demos from the web. I have downloaded every demo that has come out with RBN. I've purchased over 500 songs from it.

But I can see where the numbers are coming from.


I remember a presentation where they showed what percentage of people played on easy/medium as opposed to expert, and how many fewer played expert drums (based on Achievement data). Those of us that frequent the boards are a very very small percentage of the market of the game.

So as disappointed in this as I am I can understand the reasoning.

[Single_White_Infidel]

To look at it another way.

Over 40% (appox) of people that have a next generation console never hook it up the internet - according to the last study done. I also have (worthless) anecdotal evidence to this from working at blockbuster in the past. Most adults that played music games had no clue you could hook the machine up to the internet, much less buy regular DLC online.

Of those that have online connectivity, how many actually buy songs?

Of those that buy songs how many of them come to this message board (or similar ones).

I wonder how many people know about Error420/RBN new releases that don't frequent this board.

Now RBN sales most likely have a higher percentage of people people that fall into the above category than regular DLC or those that just buy the game.

But I can easily see that a really small portion of sales is from the links.

Do I like this - no. I found it really convenient to download demos from the web. I have downloaded every demo that has come out with RBN. I've purchased over 500 songs from it.

But I can see where the numbers are coming from.


I remember a presentation where they showed what percentage of people played on easy/medium as opposed to expert, and how many fewer played expert drums (based on Achievement data). Those of us that frequent the boards are a very very small percentage of the market of the game.

So as disappointed in this as I am I can understand the reasoning.

Yes. This.

We have to remember not to fall into a fallacy of familiarity -- as a community, we are kind of a fringe group. Aficionados, if you will, but we are in no way representative of a majority of DLC buyers. So yes, it does take away some convenience, but the reasoning is there.

[SideshowN]

Getting the links from error420 gave me more incentive to play the game daily because the regular store would only update RBN songs once or twice a week and sometimes skip a week. It just feels like another great component ala easy/fast purchasing has been takin away.

[HMXMister_Game]

Background note: If I come off as overly harsh, it's because I'm actually a software developer by day, so my distrust of software marketers is reflexive and deeply ingrained....

HEY! I'm a developer, not a marketing drone!

What I don't get is why you couldn't accomplish the same goals by making sure the downloads don't appear in the xbox.com marketplace until after they appear in the in-game store. I hope this approach was at least considered and the only reason it didn't happen was due to a lack of support for such a scheme in the xbox.com marketplace...

Because this functionality sits squarely with Microsoft, and their Marketplace content pipeline is a massive and almost impossible to move behemoth. Given that it took them over a year to fix the bug with RBN1 showing up in the first place, can you guess our chances of getting them to add a feature to hide one specific type of content for one title until we mark it as published?

Go ahead, guess.

The one thing that really gets me, is that if you get the demo from the website, play the demo, then buy it in game, that doesn't count as a website purchase. I'm willing to bet that a LOT of people do it this way, but it would be harder to track.

One thing that really surprised me (and the other creators) is how few demos are downloaded, relative to sales. We expected maybe 10 times as many demos as sales, but in fact it's usually the other way around. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? DON'T YOU LIKE FREE THINGS?

You are correct that the scenario above is counted as an in-game purchase, but given the lack of demo downloads I don't think this has a significant impact on our sales numbers either.

[cwilbur]

HEY! I'm a developer, not a marketing drone!

I double checked that it said developer under your name before I posted. I wanted to make sure I was corresponding with a reasonable human being

Because this functionality sits squarely with Microsoft, and their Marketplace content pipeline is a massive and almost impossible to move behemoth. Given that it took them over a year to fix the bug with RBN1 showing up in the first place, can you guess our chances of getting them to add a feature to hide one specific type of content for one title until we mark it as published?

Go ahead, guess.

Sadly, I can guess all too easily. Oh well. Would have been nice.

One thing that really surprised me (and the other creators) is how few demos are downloaded, relative to sales. We expected maybe 10 times as many demos as sales, but in fact it's usually the other way around. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? DON'T YOU LIKE FREE THINGS?

This would surprise me more if I hadn't just met the couple online who were stunned when I talked about downloading demos of RBN songs. "You can download playable demos? REALLY?"

Maybe the saddest thing about being a software dev is the awareness you get of how little of the information you put in front of people that they actually see and process. Doesn't "DOWNLOAD DEMO" sit directly below "PURCHASE" when you buy an RBN track? And these people I talked to had multiple RBN tracks....

You are correct that the scenario above is counted as an in-game purchase, but given the lack of demo downloads I don't think this has a significant impact on our sales numbers either.

Yeah, if total demos is 1/10 of total sales then I'm out of ammo. I guess you guys are doing the right thing.

It makes me really sad how, after so much work is put into making things easy for people (error420, dlcqp), so many are incapable of spending the 5 minutes it might take to find those easier alternatives instead of making another slow trip through the wait-for-DLC-load, into-the-store, ignore-demos, wait-for-DLC-load-on-the-way-out cycle again and again and again....

But then, I see the same thing every time I watch almost anyone use a computer, period. It just makes me want to scream "Holy crap, spend 5 minutes reading the screen and learning the tool! Do in 2 clicks what you're doing here in 12! You'll make your 5 minutes back by next week!"

I'd better stop now before I derail this thread into a general indictment of the average computer user (and before I even get started on the average computer user INTERFACE, which trains the user to act this way)....

[NoThru22]

One thing that really surprised me (and the other creators) is how few demos are downloaded, relative to sales. We expected maybe 10 times as many demos as sales, but in fact it's usually the other way around. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? DON'T YOU LIKE FREE THINGS?

Rock Band 3 is not friendly to the demo model at all. In fact, the way I would do it in the past was to queue up the demo from Error420, play through the songs and if I didn't like it, I'd delete it and go through finding all 1,000 pieces of content again, but if I liked it, I would just mark it on a list and then go download it from the website. That way, if I bought 10 songs, I wouldn't have to sit through the discovery screen 10 times. Now that that method is gone, I'll simply download less demos and count on Youtube videos to make my choice.

[DragoonXD]

I'm in the party that never bought demos (other than when I was out of points and wanted a taste of the song because I'm impatient). This is why I have all the songs with horrible charts; "Fat Kid", "Black Cloud", "A Slight Amplification", etc. Though I liked all those songs and don't regret my purchases, I can understand why HMX is getting rid of this functionality. But it's still disappointing.

[Blasteroids]

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? DON'T YOU LIKE FREE THINGS?

I play mostly drums and find the demos to not be a huge help when working out if a track is fun to play. The biggest thing that sells me tracks for regular and RBN DLC is youtube. If it was not for the vids people put up, I would not have purchased a fair few of the tracks that I have done.

So to answer your question, no I do not like free RBN demos. But I am sure others love them! For the record, I am probably in the 10:1 RBN purchases:demo ratio