Rock Band 2

[dore]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

Well Afro. Your dreams have come true. GameInformer's article (photocopied here) confirms that there will be expansion slots on the new drumsets for separately sold attachable cymbals and there will also be a first party kit that can actually double as a normal electronic drum kit. There are also going to be actual Fender Stratocasters fitted with RB parts and sold.

The rest of the article is pretty much all known info, but I thought all that was pretty cool on the hardware front.

[Tokzic]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

yes

harmonix kicks huge amounts of ass, ass always

EDIT: i swear that was unintentional

[ddr_f4n]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

Well Afro. Your dreams have come true. GameInformer's article (photocopied here) confirms that there will be expansion slots on the new drumsets for separately sold attachable cymbals and there will also be a first party kit that can actually double as a normal electronic drum kit. There are also going to be actual Fender Stratocasters fitted with RB parts and sold.

The rest of the article is pretty much all known info, but I thought all that was pretty cool on the hardware front.

I'M SO BUYING THAT NEW DRUM SET!

[t-rogdor]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

in related news, this story that i'm linking is total bullsh*t

the link is the Asteric

[Afrombean]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

in related news, this story that i'm linking is total bullsh*t

the link is the Asteric

If Konami can sue and win, then they should be able to sue and win against ANY instrument-centric music game. Why then did they not go after Activision's Guitar Hero? Why did they not hit Harmonix back in the GH2 days when this stuff was starting to really blow up? Why did they wait until this 4th generation? Here's hoping they throw it out in favor of free market thinking-- competition is a good thing.

Also: great work with the cymbal stuff, but it's still lacking the second pedal. Overall, I'd say the second pedal is just as important. I'm honestly more floored by the "actual Fender strats built with RB functionality", since that's something else I asked for a long time ago, but never thought it'd really happen. I wonder if it will even be economically viable to sell a guitar controller for ~100$, and if it will be built 1:1. Anyone who has held a real guitar would probably know the frets at the end of the neck are a lot further apart than the fret buttons are on the controller. I'm also hoping they put frets between buttons, since that was my number one problem with the RB controller: I sometimes couldn't tell which button my finger was on due to less of a clear separation (compared to GH which has larger gaps between buttons).

[ddr_f4n]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

If Konami can sue and win, then they should be able to sue and win against ANY instrument-centric music game. Why then did they not go after Activision's Guitar Hero? Why did they not hit Harmonix back in the GH2 days when this stuff was starting to really blow up? Why did they wait until this 4th generation? Here's hoping they throw it out in favor of free market thinking-- competition is a good thing.

Hey Konami. Why don't you worry about Japan and stop making crappy US DDR CS games, and let us enjoy OUR OWN GAMES?

Jeez, Guitar Hero is more closely related and known than Rock Band. How can they miss them? And it was released in Japan already?

Well, apparently Activision pay patent licenses to Konami already, so they're safe.

Why the hell would Harmonix pay if they have to halt productions to their peripherals in the end if they do so? Obviously they are going to fight, but most likely once Activision hears about this, they'll side with Konami.

Hopefully Harmonix will win. I don't want Harmonix to end up with the same fate as ITG when Konami sued them.

[t-rogdor]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

Hey Konami. Why don't you worry about Japan and stop making crappy US DDR CS games, and let us enjoy OUR OWN GAMES

2nded.

also, Hey, why dont they go ahead and STOP REPLACING ALL THE AMAZING JAPANESE SONGS WITH ****TY COVERS OF AMERICAN SONGS? IMEAN, DDR EXTREME 2 HAD LA BOMBA. LA MOTHER FU*KING BOMBA. seriously, what the hell? I heard beatmania soundtrack in US release= fail

[dore]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

**** they have a case

I believe the issue has to deal with the vox engine, which is basically copied straight out of Karaoke Revolution.

[Afrombean]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

A video game simulating playing a musical instrument isn't exactly an original concept (nor is graded singing). Might as well put a patent on all genres so that when one company comes up with an idea for a game, no one can have a similar one. The entire gaming industry is built on developing things which are at least a little similar to things which came before it. I would say that such a patent shouldn't even be allowed. Even the very idea of the peripherals being patented... they're TOY GUITARS. You can go down to Toys R Us and find dozens of different kinds of toy guitars.

I just can't stand this sort of thing. Free market competition is only bad if you like monopolies. Freaking losers.

[Squeek]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

Wow, chill out.

All you have to do is look in the patent registry to see if a patent exists for your product, or hire a patent lawyer to do it for you. It takes very little time to verify that nothing else exists in the patent registry.

For whatever reason, these companies either aren't trying hard enough to look for patents or aren't even bothering with them, and they're getting sued for it. All you have to do is spend a little time looking, find out if there's a patent, ask the patent owner if you can make something based on the patent, settle for an amount of money to pay them, then go for it. It'll be a lot less than what the courts will fine you for if they find you guilty of patent infringement.

[Afrobean]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

Wow, chill out.

All you have to do is look in the patent registry to see if a patent exists for your product, or hire a patent lawyer to do it for you. It takes very little time to verify that nothing else exists in the patent registry.

For whatever reason, these companies either aren't trying hard enough to look for patents or aren't even bothering with them, and they're getting sued for it. All you have to do is spend a little time looking, find out if there's a patent, ask the patent owner if you can make something based on the patent, settle for an amount of money to pay them, then go for it. It'll be a lot less than what the courts will fine you for if they find you guilty of patent infringement.

brb filing a patent on "thing made of matter" so everyone will have to pay me money

Some things shouldn't be allowed to be patented. What if they allowed the idea of putting a drink into a container be patented. What if they allowed the basic principle behind chairs to be patented. What if someone owned a patent for "time keeping device to be worn on a person's wrist"?

This is nothing like what happened with DDR and ITG. ITG's gameplay was literally a clone. This relationship between Harmonix's work and Konami's is more like PIUDR. If anything, Activision should be suing Harmonix for the guitar portion of the game being exactly the same (although that would be pretty ****ty considering Harmonix created the concept). Simple gameplay of Rock Band is NOTHING like anything Konami has ever done, except for the very basic concept of "simulated instrument game".

The point I'm trying to make is that such a patent shouldn't even be allowed to exist. It's contradictory to the very idea of the rhythm game genre and suggests that anyone creating a instrument-centric video game needs to go to Konami to get permission. That is stupid as hell.

[Squeek]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

And, until Guitar Hero, how many non-Konami instrument-centric games have there been? And how many of those two games do you think paid off Konami for the rights to the concept?

Arbitrary patents aren't allowed, like your patenting matter thing, but this is hardly arbitrary.

Remember Immersion? They patented rumble controllers. Nintendo's use of rumble was unique and not associated with the patent, but Sony and Microsoft's "ideas" ended up being very similar to the patent, so they lost. Microsoft chose the smart route and settled out of court. Sony went to court and lost millions of dollars and rumble for their latest console until they found a way to make controllers rumble without infringing on Nintendo's patents OR Immersion's, or requesting permission to use their ideas in their controllers. They chose to use Immersion's ideas, and once it was settled, they could finally get rumble onto the PS3.

So yes. This one company patented force feedback, and you must pay them if you want to use their idea or spend a lot of time thinking of a way to circumvent the patent and hope you don't get caught. Harmonix got caught. Now it's up to the patent courts to decide whether or not it's really a violation of the patent or not.

I can't read patent law nor can I even come close to understanding the patent language itself, so I can't tell you my opinion on the matter. Just know that most patent lawsuits fall through, either because the issuer drops the lawsuit or the judge rules in favor of the defendant.

You're not alone in what you think, but you know the way our Government works. It'll never change.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patents#Criticism

"Patents have also been criticized for conferring a "negative right" upon a patent owner, permitting them to exclude competitors from using or exploiting the invention, even if the competitor subsequently develops the same invention independently. This may be subsequent to the date of invention, or to the priority date, depending upon the relevant patent law (see First to file and first to invent). [12]"

Copyrights are different though. If you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you never had any knowledge of the item in question that you are accused of copying, you can get off scot-free. So if two people write the same book, but have never even seen each other, let alone live in the same country, they both can have the rights to the same book.

That's why despite all the idiots who claim coldplay rips off some indie underground fagband, there's no way they could win a court case against them. How can you prove that coldplay heard your crappy-ass song, loved it, and decided to rip it off? Good luck there.

[omega_grunt666]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

I'd still rather buy GH4, Guitar Hero always has better music.

especially true if rb2 doesnt include a music creation mode..

the only reason its coming out so soon is that it is basically the same game, with different songs. [guitar hero aerosmith anyone?] from what ive seen it doesnt offer much more.

i like to compare it like this..

Rockband 1 to 2, is like guitar hero 3 to aerosmith
while
Guitar Hero 3 to 4 is like counter-strike 1.6 to source

[Afrobean]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

Squeek, your rumble example is totally different. What Konami has done is tandamount to if the original rumbling company had simply made a patent on "handheld input device with vibrating capability", and no matter what Nintendo or Microsoft or Sony did, if they made a controller that rumbled, it'd be an infringement. Like you said, it's possible to create a controller that rumbles without using the same idea as the original, but it's not possible to create a instrument-centric game such as Rock Band without apparently infringing on Konami's patent.

ps thanks for the wikipedia article:

Patents may hinder innovation as well in the case of "troll" entities. A holding company, pejoratively known as a "patent troll", owns a portfolio of patents, and sues others for infringement of these patents while doing little to develop the technology itself. [13]

When was the last time Konami released a US instrument centric rhythm game? I guess you could call BMUS, but is that really an instrument?

pps after some digging, I found something ****EN HILARIOUS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DrumMania

Konami has not mass produced an American version of DrumMania, primarily since MTV Games holds the US patent for "drum simulation games", which MTV took full advantage of with the release of Rock Band.

That's a mind**** if I ever heard one.

[Telvanni_guard]

Re: Rock Band 2 Official

the only reason its coming out so soon is that it is basically the same game, with different songs. [guitar hero aerosmith anyone?] from what ive seen it doesnt offer much more.

Band World Tour. Solo Bass Career. Improved instruments...


If they just wanted to release more songs, they could have done that through DLC like they've been doing.