PS3:IN THE SPOTLIGHT

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PS3 FEATURED VIDEO

PS3:IN THE SPOTLIGHT

The Year the Music Died

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In February 2008, NanaOn-Sha CEO and PaRappa the Rapper creator Masaya Matsuura stepped onto the stage of the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas, Nev., and issued a polite but harsh challenge to videogame developers: Stop wasting your talents and the world's music with licensed play-along games.

His exhortation for change couldn't have come at a more fitting time. Between 2007 and today, the videogame industry has produced nearly 20 separate music games for multiple platforms. That's seven Guitar Hero games, three retail Rock Band games (with two more on the way), Wii music, Rock Revolution, Lips, Sing Star, Karaoke Revolution and its many incarnations, and more Disney sing-along tie-ins than IGN's database can handle. And we haven't even gotten to the two separate DJ games that are on the way this year.

Matsuura's argument is that, while games like these are fun, they have proliferated so quickly that the genre has become oversaturated and stale, focusing mainly on music as a commodity rather than integrating it into games in new and exciting ways. I couldn't agree more.

It happened late last year. I can't put a finger on an exact date, but it was likely around the time I was previewing the AC/DC Live: Rock Band standalone game from Harmonix and MTV Games. I hit the wall with play-along music games. I was done. I'd lived the fantasy and acted like a rocker with my friends. I'd downloaded songs, played the fake drums and stayed up far too late singing along to Police songs while my fake band mates humored me. Then, one day I just woke up, looked around at all the plastic peripherals and realized I was done. No other gaming genre has lost its luster for me quicker than the Rock Band/Guitar Hero/Sing Star fantasy fest.

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