You know why there was no marketing for RB3?

[Tom Imp]

I remember seeing a ton for Rock Band 2 all the time, but I never saw a single RB3 commercial.

Same here. I honestly don't remember a single commercial about RB3 and if not for this forum, I probably never would have known about it.

I can buy the not wanting to waste money on advertising if it's not going to pay off, but one would think they'd definitely want to get the word out to the public about the pro guitars and the keyboard since they were new additions. Once again, if not for this forum, I'd never know those existed either.

[gamrrpol]

Well....I think OP is making a number of assumptions and mis-reads about this situation.

"Then with the second and third games, the popularity grew and Activision was suddenly making tons of cash off of this franchise. But then, with Guitar Hero: World Tour not doing as well (and Rock Band 2 selling lots of copies), things started to turn around. So they thought "How about we start advertising the crap out of Guitar Hero, to get more people to buy it!" Guitar Hero 5 launched, and they didn't make back the money that they lost from all the advertising."

First, Activision didn't own the first or second game. They purchased the GH brand from HMX after both of those games (as well as GH: Rocks the 80's). The first game published by Activion was GH3. And make no mistake, Activision was ALL-IN from the day they spent a kajillion dollars for the GH brand. GH3 was massively marketed....most notably with inclusion of Slash on the cover and commercials featuring him. So, it wasn't the lack of sales from GH: World Tour that led ACT to invest in massive marketing dollars. They had been doing that from day one. It's what they do.

"A year later, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock came out, and despite its 93-song metal setlist, new storyline, exclusive Megadeth song, and Soundgarden tie-in, no one liked it and they had no choice but to end the series."

By the time ACT put GH out of its misery they had released 4 main GH games, 3 band-centric games, 2 expansion games, 2 DJ hero games, 3 DS games and 4 mobile games. Again...this is what ACT does. They buy a profitable franchise and then milk it for all its worth. Once they saw that rhythm gaming was no longer a mass phenomenon they moved on to milking CoD.

And that's what's really going on here....the music rhythm gaming phenomenon was a fad. When sales increased from 2M units in 2005 to 6M in 2006 and then 22M units in 2007 everyone involved was swimming in profits.

Unfortunately, many industry players thought this was a permanent reality...when in fact it was a fad. It's why ACT kept putting out a new game every other month; it's why Viacom paid $175M for Harmonix. When sales decline to 14M by 2009 the clouds were building; when sales plummeted to <2M units in 2010 the party was over. Soon ACT closed the GH brand and HMX was sold for $50.

"The game was completely aimed at Rock Band fans, and they weren't trying to reach out to the general public."

But don't for a second think that HMX or Rock Band was ready to give up while developing RB3. In many ways RB3 represented the last great stand by HMX (or any other player) in the plastic-peripheral rhythm game arena. They threw everything into it: keyboards, melodies, pro-game modes. Do not for a second think they when they did this they had given up on the idea of appealing to mass audiences. They saw a dwindling audience and hoped these dramatic improvements would re-ignite the brand and the genre. While there marketing campaign was not a robust as earlier RB games it was still substantial. How many games released each year have any type of television advertising? Twenty? Thirty maybe? In 2010 RB3 was one of the few to enjoy such marketing support.

Unfortunately it didn't work. The fad was proven a fad and the entire category of games left to a small but devoted audience. Rock Band Blitz was a reaction to some of the challenging realities of the peripheral-based game. First....development and support of the actual instruments is expensive and not profitable, distribution is challenging, complex and not profitable and display at retail is virtually impossible and expensive.

HMX figured...let's leverage the RB brand while moving away from the problems associated with the plastic peripherals. It wasn't created because "people hadn't heard anything about music games for a while".

Frankly I'm surprised HMX continues to support Rock Band. The ever-dwindling number of players means a microscopic "install base" to sell songs to. I honestly think their continues support is as much a labor of love as anything.

They created something that is undeniable great even though 95% of the consumers have forgotten it. Those left, however, are dedicated, loyal players ....and I think that includes many in the company itself. I'm curious if the continued support of the servers, the website, the (admittedly scaled back) DCL is actually profitable for HMX. I wouldn't doubt that it's not.

I'm also pretty certain they won't be investing large sums of money to build a new game / platform / support system for the new consoles. Which means the days of Rock Band as we know it are likely coming to an end soon.

[gamrrpol]

I think we can all be certain that there will be a way to use the Rock Band DLC library on the new consoles, IF the DLC is able to be ported over (either for free or for a fee, even a relatively steep one). And that means Rock Band Blitz on the PS4 and Xbox720.

You can't play Rock Band 4 without a supply of new instruments, and that's not a problem that has an easy solution (other than the "Blitz" solution, which was both a seemingly obvious and yet totally brilliant step).

I'm highly skeptical. I certainly don't see anyone investing in developing new peripherals for such a small audience; there's just no real payoff for the manufacturers.

I'm also skeptical HMX wants to invest in the loyal but very small Rock Band audience. I'm not technically knowledgeable, so maybe what I'm saying here is completely wrong...but I'm guessing that support for new consoles would require significant development and cost. And I just don't see HMX investing in that with very little potential payoff. Current users being able to play songs they've already purchased isn't much of an incentive.

Honestly hope I'm wrong...but I don't see a future for RB on the new consoles.

[meck77]

I saw many many RB3 commercials, it was almost always the same one. I remember it had that hot lil chick playing the RB3 drums with full cymbals.

[David2380]

I'm highly skeptical. I certainly don't see anyone investing in developing new peripherals for such a small audience; there's just no real payoff for the manufacturers.

I'm also skeptical HMX wants to invest in the loyal but very small Rock Band audience. I'm not technically knowledgeable, so maybe what I'm saying here is completely wrong...but I'm guessing that support for new consoles would require significant development and cost. And I just don't see HMX investing in that with very little potential payoff. Current users being able to play songs they've already purchased isn't much of an incentive.

Honestly hope I'm wrong...but I don't see a future for RB on the new consoles.

I think the major problem with the chances of a RB4 on the new systems is the peripherals. There is probably no way they would invest in new instruments and very few would buy new ones after what we've invested already.Pretty sure the all of the songs could carry forward but not the instruments

[Munnchy]

I think the major problem with the chances of a RB4 on the new systems is the peripherals. There is probably no way they would invest in new instruments and very few would buy new ones after what we've invested already.Pretty sure the all of the songs could carry forward but not the instruments

I think the only console that would prove problematic for that would be the new xbox. I'm sure a small patch would make PS3 controllers compatible with the new console (You have to have a USB adapter for instruments to work on the ps3, don't you?) I could be very wrong though. Just speculating

[ThatAuthoringGroup]

Yeah as much as I hate to say it UNLESS there is a sudden revival in the music genre there won't be a Rock Band 4.

Simply put it's the instruments.

They cost too much to produce, retailers don't want anything to do with an expensive controller (that has the double whammy of taking up huge amounts of floor space) for a niche market, and with the market the way it is, it's just waaaay too much of a risk for harmonix to take IMO.

The ONLY way I can see it working is if they get a partner that can offer the instruments via online ordering (IE no retail space), so they don't have the overhead cost of manufacturing and shipping a crap ton of controllers that might not sell.

Of course that won't bring in any new players because what person that doesn't play Rock Band is going to buy Rock Band 4 disc at retail then wait 4-6 weeks to get instruments from an online store in order to play.

So it's a catch 22.

Can't get new players without new instruments. Can't get new instruments without sufficient players in place to purchase them.

As for the OP topic: The reason we didn't see any advertisement is (IMO) Viacom wanted out and wasn't going to spend one more red cent than they had to to dump the RB franchise.

In short, the were greedy dicks, and they didn't care what the hell happened to Rock Band at that point.

As for why you see Activision advertising the crap out of COD? Maybe because it's the biggest sales juggernaut ever? (and yes the argument could be made that it's that way because of advertising but I digress).

You can't expect the same level of advertising dollars behind what is essentially a niche market now and what is the biggest selling franchise in the history of the business.

That's like saying Saw 6 failed because it didn't have the marketing campaign that Star Wars Episode 3 had.

[Santa Claustrophobia]

(and yes the argument could be made that it's that way because of advertising but I digress)

Problem is that that is merely just coincidence. You'll find that almost without exception, marketing and PR budgets go up for games that are already expected to sell.

The result is the belief that the larger the ad budget, the more successful a title, because successful titles have large ad budgets. And you get threads like this suggesting greater success if only they'd spent more money. (A familiar theme if you see those threads suggesting that HMX could've gotten better DLC sales results by doing X thing to fulfill some specific idea or desire.)

[mikeyts]

The fact is that only a small subset of people are interested in making the effort to learn to play a musical instrument and only a subset of them would be interested in using a console video game with expensive pro guitar controllers to do it. No matter how well they advertised the pro instrument features I doubt that it would have significantly increased sales and certainly not enough to pay for lots of additional advertising (though some people have posted here that they only started playing the game to play pro guitar, only about 5% of player profiles have posted pro guitar scores to the leaderboards).

I recall reading that a 30 second ad on a TV show runs from somewhere around $50K to $500K, depending on ratings, so that one minute ad featuring a band playing "Bohemian Rhapsody" using both pro guitar controllers, a keyboard, cymbals and multiple mics would cost from $100K to $1M to broadcast. It's impressive that it played as often as it did.

[Pitch-Black]

There are more ways to advertise besides television, and those ways are likely much less expensive, and in the case of a video game, probably more effective anyway. Like internet ads and gaming magazines. I agree that advertising will only get you so far, but on the other hand NOT advertising or not advertising enough gets you absolutely nowhere.