14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that Activision and Red Octane might be interested in offering a new way to get the various downloadable content packs for Guitar Hero. In addition to the current mode, which allows the player to pay as he picks up each track, the two companies might introduce a subscription model allowing fans to get as many songs as they want during a month for a fixed fee.
Kai Huang, who is one of the co-founder of developer Red Octane, has told the Seattle Times in an answer related to the subscription model that “That's definitely one of the things we would love to do. There are a lot of issues around music licensing. Customers want it; I know I want it. We're trying to make that happen”.
Huang has not specified when this service might be officially announced or how much he expects the subscription for one month to cost. There are also difficulties related to the infrastructure, as the servers put up by Activision will likely be overwhelmed on the first day when the subscription service goes live. There might actually be further problems related to the fact that a user might get quite a log of content in one month, resulting in a very small price per track paid to Red Octane and Activision. Of course, the two companies have already paid the licensing fees for the tracks, so any amount of revenue that they squeeze out of them is welcome.
Analysts watching the videogame industry have said that the music simulator genre is getting less sales this year, with both Guitar Hero 5 and The Beatles Rock Band achieving less than the expected impact. DJ Hero, the disk scratching spin off from the Guitar Hero franchise, has performed particularly bad in the NPD Group numbers for last month.