Battle of the brands

Forget Microsoft versus Sony versus Nintendo. The real video game showdown isn’t between console makers, it’s the slugfest between Rock Band and Guitar Hero. The two franchises are locked in an arms race where the battle is literally about arms – and how many of them can be squeezed into their respective games.

Electronic Arts’ Rock Band, which lets up to four players jam along to their TV screen on plastic instruments, holds the lead so far with seven possible arms — two each for guitar, bass and drums, and one for the microphone. That number jumps to eight if the singer in your video-game band has Trent Reznor-like intensity and clutches the microphone with two hands. (Conversely, it drops to six if your vocalist uses a mic stand and sings hands off, like certain lackadaisical Brit-pop frontmen.)

Realizing its disadvantage, Activision is adding vocals and drums to Guitar Hero in a new iteration due later this year, thus expanding the franchise from its titular essence. By the end of the year, Guitar Hero World Tour will be competing with Rock Band 2, the sequel set for a September release, as the game of choice for music fans.

But where do we go from here? How does this arms race escalate?

Some gamers argue the deciding factor will be the quantity and variety of the music included in each title, while others will choose based on the quality of the plastic instruments. The key in the long term, however, will be innovation – which franchise can evolve the idea even further.

The very first Guitar Hero game, released for the PlayStation 2 in 2005, was a joint venture by California-based RedOctane and Massachusetts-based Harmonix Music Systems. Harmonix supplied the software while RedOctane made the guitar, which had five coloured fret buttons and a strum bar that players hit in time with notes scrolling down the screen. A sensation was born and two further titles were released for the PS2, its PlayStation 3 successor and the Xbox 360.

Harmonix and RedOctane went their separate ways after acquisitions in 2006 – MTV purchased the former while Activision bought the latter and the Guitar Hero franchise with it. Harmonix, started in 1995 by two music buffs, decided to take the Guitar Hero idea to its next, logical level: the inclusion of a whole band. In November 2007, the company launched Rock Band through Electronic Arts, completing its vision of turning living rooms into garages by letting gamers field a full four-piece ensemble.

Activision’s response was Guitar Hero III, which delivered more of the same but nothing new. Although the franchise continued to sell well, the common thinking in gaming circles was that Rock Band was an innovative step forward while Guitar Hero III was just another cash grab.

Guitar Hero World Tour promises to take a major step forward, however, by allowing players to come up with and record their own tracks. Early reports say the song-creation mode is deeper than anyone expected, which could turn out to be either a good or bad thing — the mode could flop if it proves too complicated to use. The feature could, however, turn out to be the Facebook of music by creating a huge online social network where gamers swap their original song creations. It could also do for music what digital cameras did for photography, or greatly expand the hobby and art form by making it easy enough for the masses to adopt. Who knows? It’s entirely possible that some day, a song created in Guitar Hero will top the music charts.

Rock Band’s creators, meanwhile, are eschewing song creation in favour of a different kind of technological wizardry. The game will allow players to export most of the songs found on the first disc onto their Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, so that they are playable in the sequel, which Harmonix says is a first for a console video game. That’s in addition to any songs purchased through download to play in the first game, which, when added to the 80 tracks promised on the Rock Band 2 disc, will amount to a huge possible set list.

The scene is set for the remainder of this year, but like the bands they bring into gamers’ living rooms, these franchises are only as good as their last release. So what do they do for an encore next year?

Again, it comes down to arms, and thus the inevitable question: When do keyboards get added to the equation? If the game creators are looking to simulate the band experience, surely they must eventually force gamers into a dilemma: Do they stay true to their rocking roots and shun keyboards, or do they sell out and go the pop route? If the problem was enough to break up Van Halen, some video game bands will surely end up as similar casualties.

Mind you, adding keyboards could also have a positive effect. Nine Inch Nails manage to positively rock out on Closer, a song with three keyboardists, a drummer and vocals. Think of the synth-rock and industrial possibilities. Why stop there? Harmonix and MTV have already released a full Cars album for Rock Band. Does anybody really feel right playing these songs on a guitar and not a keytar? Add a keytar and you could release a full '80s disc, much like the Guitar Hero folks did last summer. You could maybe even package it with a skinny leather tie.

Aside from the traditional four-piece, tomorrow’s video game bands could include a keyboardist, saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, harmonica player, accordionist, flutist and who knows what else. Find a way to connect several television screens together and you could have a modern-day Sly and the Family Stone – a dozen or more people sharing the stage, er screen, at the same time. Now that would be a lot of arms.

Peter Nowak writes about technology for CBCNews.ca.