Discussion Thread for Releasing Blitz Tracks as Singles & Plans for Upcoming RB DLC

[Scythemaster 37]

I don't see this as a slowing down of DLC. As it seems, the bi-weekly Blitz releases are not a sign of a slow down, but of Harmonix giving those who couldn't or didn't want to purchase Blitz the opportunity to purchase the content they want. Because of the inconvenience of releasing all the Blitz tracks at once, the next best way to pump out the Blitz songs in the fastest and most efficienct way is to release them bi-weekly. From my perspective, it looks like after this whole "Great Blitz Depression" is over, Harmonix will go back to business-as-usual.

I would love to believe this, and we just got a "yep, after Blitz we're going back to the way things were". I don't even care if it's just one song a week ;(

[expertwinSH]

I remember the MTV days (even when I played only GH) when they licensed The Beatles. Now they're releasing repeats. Ah, the days go by so fast....

[broncosfan06]

Lazy.

As with regular DLC announcements, i.e. announcing weekly rather than monthly or announcing batches of upcoming releases all at once, we try to avoid commenting too far out because the schedule / production / testing / submission can still change. We'll have more info as we get closer to releasing all of the Blitz singles.

= Yes it will be biweekly

A negative response from the forums was fully expected, but the forums are nowhere near representative of the entirety of the RB community. The forum community is the most likely to have purchased Blitz at launch or while on sale because they are the most plugged in, they are the completionists, the ones most likely to try a new twist on the traditional RB game play. Of course forum regulars would have loved to see new content alongside the Blitz single releases, but for all the production and bandwidth reasons mentioned in the FAQ it wasn't a possibility.

But it's worth noting that there are a great many people that didn't buy Blitz, and anyone on the Wii has never had the option to purchase these songs before. The size of that addressable community alone is more than the active user base on the forums. We're not releasing Blitz tracks as singles because we are mean or lazy, it's because DLC will reach a lot of people that Blitz didn't. We've done this before with track packs and more recently with GD:RB and we have a pretty solid grasp on requests not just from the forums, but from Facebook, Twitter, PMs, emails, conventions, phone calls, and actual mail. Again, I'm not trying to convince anyone that purchased Blitz that this is for them, I just want to reiterate that the community is larger than the forums.

Really? Lets take a look at sales shall we (yes i know its only 360 but still it more than likely represents PS3 as well).

Elton John 01
1644 +90 "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" - Elton John 12/18/2012
1783 +49 "The ***** Is Back" - Elton John 12/18/2012
1828 +47 Elton John Pack 01 12/18/2012
1884 +47 "I'm Still Standing" - Elton John 12/28/2012

the Blitz song is last

MCR 01
1581 NEW "Helena" - My Chemical Romance 12/25/2012
1643 NEW "Teenagers" - My Chemical Romance 12/25/2012
1840 NEW My Chemical Romance Pack 01 12/25/2012
1923 NEW "Sing" - My Chemical Romance 12/25/2012

the Blitz song is last

Singles last week:
1926 NEW "Party Hard" - Andrew W.K. 12/30/2012

Only song that sold enough to rank as of 1/1 also not a Blitz song. (Only out two days however).

Ya looks like the Blitz songs are selling pretty well...

*waits for Henry to somehow try to make it sound like Wii users will make up for this*


We went from full albums and around 40-50 songs a month to 25ish songs a month to 12 songs a month to now 6 songs a month. This is exactly what happened with GH...first DLC every week then every other week then once a month then nothing. It was fun while it lasted.

[peterock2007]

What if this is the rug?

my original comment was that hmx wouldn't announce the end of dlc in advance but end abruptly. Henry assured me this wasn't true. And for the record one week is not advance notice.

[SirDavidTLynch]

Relative sales figures on one console in one country aren't going to change Harmonix' minds, especially the songs that are only tracked for two days of a weekly thread. At this point it would be worse to lead people to believe all the Blitz songs will be released, then abruptly stop and leave holes all over the immediate DLC schedule.

[LuigiHann]

For me, these all-blitz weeks aren't that different from any other week when the DLC is a band I don't know or like or care about, it's just more songs I'm not buying. The major difference is that now, every other week, there's no hope that there'll be a song that I want to buy. I'm not sure if I should be thankful for that or not, but I suppose one big up-front disappointment is better than being disappointed anew every other week? Hmm. Not like it's going to stop me from looking every week to see which songs are coming out, I suppose

[Meat-Popsicle]

I remember the MTV days (even when I played only GH) when they licensed The Beatles.

And we'll always have The Beatles! What a lucky accident that the peak of Rock Band popularity / available capital coincided with their catalog being remastered, instrument by instrument, for "Love".

And yet I still haven't played in over a year, mostly because there's no site like rockbandscores.com to track my progress. It sounds like a really lame explanation, I know, but I find that being able to track my stats so easily is really motivating for me, at least when I'm playing alone.

New Years Resolution: to get my monthly Rock Band group to play RB:TB, instead of RB3, for the entirety of one of our 2013 sessions.

[Hetz]

And we'll always have The Beatles! What a lucky accident that the peak of Rock Band popularity / available capital coincided with their catalog being remastered, instrument by instrument, for "Love".

And yet I still haven't played in over a year, mostly because there's no site like rockbandscores.com to track my progress. It sounds like a really lame explanation, I know, but I find that being able to track my stats so easily is really motivating for me, at least when I'm playing alone.

New Years Resolution: to get my monthly Rock Band group to play RB:TB, instead of RB3, for the entirety of one of our 2013 sessions.

It's funny how we all have gone from complaining that there isn't more Beatles DLC, to now having to beg for them to release a minimum of six new songs a month. Yikes.

It just pained me to write that. Six songs a month. *sigh*

[RockBandRocker]

I swear, Rock Band is like Kenny on "South Park" with how many times it has "died" according to the community.

Can some of you not read? DLC IS NOT stopping. The announcement is just setting expectations. They are still going to be releasing non-Blitz content while they release the remainder of the Blitz songs. You might already own the songs as DLC because you purchased Blitz because you're an early adopter, but for some people (mostly Wii folk) the Blitz songs are NEW DLC.

Rock Band's not going anywhere anytime soon. Christ, there's so much negativity here. Did the recent MCR DLC turn everyone into emo teenagers that want to wrist cut? Things have always been slow in the winter months. This isn't the end of Rock Band or DLC or HMX.

So, cheer up.


Edit: Reading back, I realize the above could sound a bit condescending. So, let me re-phrase what I'm trying to say: This announcement doesn't change anything. It's just HMX giving us all a friendly heads up that 2013 DLC is going to fall in line with 2012 DLC and that we won't be getting any megapacks anytime soon (which we haven't had any megapacks for over a year, so we know that already).

[Pointblank41]

HMXHenry,

Are you guys still actively licensing songs / looking to license songs for the Rock Band platform?

I'm just afraid that the well has dried up and that you guys are going to just gradually release what you've already licensed until it's gone.

Also, when and if you guys decide to stop providing DLC for Rock Band, will you still support the RBN? It's not so bad if you guys decide to stop DLC if the RBN authors pick up some of the bands you guys are known for and continue the DLC stream.