Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Rock Band Note

I saw these listings over at EBGames a few minutes ago:
11/01 $59.99 Rock Band
11/01 $79.99 Xbox 360 Rock Band Drums Set
11/01 $59.99 Rock Band Controller
11/01 $79.99 Xbox 360 Rock Band Wireless Guitar Controller
11/01 $39.99 Xbox 360 Rock Band Microphone

If those prices are correct, then we're looking at two hundred and forty dollars for the game plus all controllers. Well, unless you want a wireless guitar controller, in which case you'll be paying two hundred and sixty.

That's publisher suicide. No matter how brilliant this game might be, we aren't going to support prices like that. Once again, EA proves that they don't understand their own market.

Oh, and that's not even including the downloadable content. If you think EA is going to include all the best content in the base game, think again.

I don't think they're using very sophisticated reasoning here--"Guitar Hero II is selling like crazy at $89.99, so we can charge more than that because we have better marketing."

Good luck with that.

So will they add a SKU for the game+guitar controller? I assume they have to, just to compete with GH III, but I expect that to be the only bundle. Adding bundles for the drums and the microphone, even if they limit it to one peripheral in a bundle, would mean that stores would need to manage eight different SKU's for one game.

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