Guitar Hero doesn’t stop at III: major releases yearly

Who knows? At this rate, they just might drop the Roman numerals and go Madden ’08 Guitar Hero ’08. RedOctane prez Kai Huang tells Eurogamer, “I think that fans can definitely expect that we’re going to have one major release a year,” along with the downloadable song packs, of course.

Does it have to be a bad thing? Maybe not, maybe not. Kai notes that not everyone has an online connection for their console, so for them, physical media is the way to go. Heck, RedOctane might even think of doing genre-based disc releases. They’re doing physical and broadband both – Kai thinks that the SingStar Store is “a great model and a great thing to model ourselves after.”

Speaking about… um, bad things, Kai also took the opportunity to deal with criticisms regarding Marketplace pricing of their song packs, and using PS2 guitars with the PS3. The official line remains: Kai believes they are priced competitively, “but certainly we listen to the fans and we take that feedback, and if that’s something we’ll need to evaluate we’ll do that.” Speaking about competition, who knows? Perhaps Rock Band (PS3, Xbox 360)’s entry into the market may just shift the price points some.

And about those guitars, Kai says RedOctane is working with Sony on that matter as of the moment. “Unfortunately we don’t have any promises yet, but we’re definitely working hard to see if we can make that happen.” RedOctane’s also got some new guitars on the drawing board, “which we’ll be releasing at the end of this year for all platforms.”

Finally, the competition, since we went and mentioned Rock Band already. Kai can only be “very excited” about former partner Harmonix’s team-up with EA and MTV; it can only mean greater exposure for the rhythm/music game genre.

Who knows? At this rate, they just might drop the Roman numerals and go Madden ’08 Guitar Hero ’08. RedOctane prez Kai Huang tells Eurogamer, “I think that fans can definitely expect that we’re going to have one major release a year,” along with the downloadable song packs, of course.

Does it have to be a bad thing? Maybe not, maybe not. Kai notes that not everyone has an online connection for their console, so for them, physical media is the way to go. Heck, RedOctane might even think of doing genre-based disc releases. They’re doing physical and broadband both – Kai thinks that the SingStar Store is “a great model and a great thing to model ourselves after.”

Speaking about… um, bad things, Kai also took the opportunity to deal with criticisms regarding Marketplace pricing of their song packs, and using PS2 guitars with the PS3. The official line remains: Kai believes they are priced competitively, “but certainly we listen to the fans and we take that feedback, and if that’s something we’ll need to evaluate we’ll do that.” Speaking about competition, who knows? Perhaps Rock Band (PS3, Xbox 360)’s entry into the market may just shift the price points some.

And about those guitars, Kai says RedOctane is working with Sony on that matter as of the moment. “Unfortunately we don’t have any promises yet, but we’re definitely working hard to see if we can make that happen.” RedOctane’s also got some new guitars on the drawing board, “which we’ll be releasing at the end of this year for all platforms.”

Finally, the competition, since we went and mentioned Rock Band already. Kai can only be “very excited” about former partner Harmonix’s team-up with EA and MTV; it can only mean greater exposure for the rhythm/music game genre.