Rock Band will be affordable, says game art director

Ryan Lesser, Harmonix art director, assures GamesIndustry.biz that they are doing all they can to keep Rock Band (Xbox 360, PS3) affordable. In particular, he’s dismissing rumors that it will cost around US$ 150.00-200.00 to jam. And this despite all those instruments.

That US$ 200.00 figure was allegedly from someone who took part in a focus group for Rock Band. Lesser explained that such a leak could not be true because “of a lot of reasons that I can’t talk about, but we’re far from releasing prices at this point.” But:

There’s no way we’re going to make a game that people are not going to be happy about buying. We scrutinize every little piece that goes into every peripheral to make sure that it’s affordable and still really high quality.

How much of a challenge would it be? GameStop already had prices for those peripherals (guitar, drum set, microphone), all of which (plus the game) would put it in the US$ 150-200 range. But then, Lesser did say that Harmonix was far from releasing prices yet – so how did GameStop get these prices in the first place?

Ryan Lesser, Harmonix art director, assures GamesIndustry.biz that they are doing all they can to keep Rock Band (Xbox 360, PS3) affordable. In particular, he’s dismissing rumors that it will cost around US$ 150.00-200.00 to jam. And this despite all those instruments.

That US$ 200.00 figure was allegedly from someone who took part in a focus group for Rock Band. Lesser explained that such a leak could not be true because “of a lot of reasons that I can’t talk about, but we’re far from releasing prices at this point.” But:

There’s no way we’re going to make a game that people are not going to be happy about buying. We scrutinize every little piece that goes into every peripheral to make sure that it’s affordable and still really high quality.

How much of a challenge would it be? GameStop already had prices for those peripherals (guitar, drum set, microphone), all of which (plus the game) would put it in the US$ 150-200 range. But then, Lesser did say that Harmonix was far from releasing prices yet – so how did GameStop get these prices in the first place?