Current Gaming Addiction - GH3

Okay, going to start something new here - what game I'm currently enthralled with. Maybe I'll start posting up reviews of the games I've been playing or something as well in the future, if I can think of a format that I will actually stick to.

Since getting a xbox360 back in September, I have already gone through several games I really like. Currently the game of passion is "Guitar Hero 3", which I'd say that I'm going to get, or have gotten, my $99 worth of money out of.

That said, the game is fun but also limited. I found the unlockable music to be interesting, but not much to repeat. I'd think they would have some level of golden rock song, or interesting co-op song nestled in there that completing the others would tempt you with. I've found a few of those, but in general the song you "buy" with in-game money (not the MicroSoft Points ones) have been by bands I've never heard of, and several of them are in German - which is kinda cool, but not something I'd say is worthy of "unlock" status in a music game.

And probably the worst part of the game should be it's total redeeming factor - Downloadable Content (DLC). The DLC for GH3 is now starting to show up on xboxLIVE, and the pricing on it is way over the top. While the price of MP3's goes down, and the ways you are entitled to use it are increasing, the GH tracks are limited to just inside the game, and cost more than twice the typical MP3 alternative. From a marketing perspective this is just poor design. You have a fixed cost to create the content, and a near zero cost to distribute it. You have a limited customer base for the product, but the price is set at a very limited take rate. Even a simple bystanding thought would make you think that the pricing is out of line if you aren't getting 60-80% take rate on the songs, since you already know the folks that would possibly buy it would be the ones that already plunked down $60 for the game, and maybe bought a special controller to play.

Oh well, I'd still give the game a high score because it's fun, and more than just a couple of hours of fun at that. Christy and I have played it a lot in the past couple of weeks now, and I don't see us really putting another game ahead of it on the play list much... at least until Rock Band comes out on 11/20.