Rock Games Battle for Bands

And while Activision promises more games based around single bands, the company says there's a limited number of acts that could carry a title on their own. "There's actually just a handful of bands that have this really deep catalog of music that people would have a lot of fun playing," says Kai Huang, president and co-founder of Activision subsidiary RedOctane. One of those bands, Led Zeppelin, have taken themselves out of the running — they have yet to license songs to a game and have no plans to, because of concerns about turning over their masters to outsiders, according to their management company, Q Prime. Rock Band and Guitar Hero executives are pursuing the Beatles (who have also not licensed any master tracks to the games), but no plans have been announced.

But the ultimate guitar hero, Hendrix, is finally coming to GH in Guitar Hero: World Tour. The Hendrix estate, which had difficulty working with the original masters until now, has delivered multiple songs — including "Purple Haze," "Foxy Lady" and "Little Wing" — to RedOctane for use in the game and as downloadable tracks. It has also authorized an official Hendrix avatar to use as a game character. "Guitar Hero really was on the ball, and they were biting at the bit to get this out this year, so we accommodated them," says Janie Hendrix, who is also working on a possible deal with Rock Band. "Jimi was a kid at heart — he definitely would have played these games."

While each edition of these games comes with dozens of playable songs — Rock Band 2 will include tracks from Elvis Costello's "Pump It Up" to AC/DC's "Let There Be Rock" — both Guitar Hero and Rock Band offer hundreds more that can be downloaded through Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. Fans have bought 20 million of these $2-apiece tracks for Guitar Hero and 16 million for Rock Band. Bands and labels each earn about 50 cents per track, more than they get from iTunes and other standard download sites. "This fusion of gaming and music is really expanding the music industry," says Eran Egozy, co-founder of Harmonix, which makes Rock Band — and originally developed Guitar Hero before the franchise moved to Activision. "It's a revolution for the business."

While the Guitar Hero franchise dwarfs the newer Rock Band — 20.7 million Guitar Hero games have sold worldwide in various incarnations, versus 1.3 million of Rock Band — the latter has the power of media giant Viacom behind it. The company is promoting the game and its downloadable content on MTV and VH1, as on the recent VH1 Rock Honors: The Who special, which heavily pushed a Rock Band download package of 12 Who songs. "Rock Honors was originally floated as an idea to help sell Rock Band," Who guitarist Pete Townshend wrote in an e-mail to Rolling Stone, before making a bitter joke about smashing plastic guitars onstage.

But most veteran artists and their managers are less ambivalent about tying their fates to a video game. Allen Kovac, CEO of Tenth Street Entertainment, Mötley Crûe's management firm, says the company's internal research showed that the games are "bringing a whole new demographic and audience to rock." Accordingly, Mötley Crûe debuted the first single from their new album on Rock Band, selling 48,000 playable copies. "Pretty soon," says Kovac, "this is going to be the way you sell music."

[From Issue 1058 — August 7, 2008]

• More From Issue 1058