Are subscription services the way forward for music games?

Activision has said recently that there will be less ‘Hero’ branded games in 2010 than there have been in 2009 and many believe that the music rhythm action games are in decline, but that doesn’t bother Guitar Hero’s creators. Speaking with the Seattle Times recently RedOctane founder Kai Huang spoke of his ambitions for the future of the Guitar Hero franchise, why he’s excited about DJ Hero and how these games could evolve in the coming years.

First up was using camera tech to track player movements or put them in the game. “We haven’t made any specific announcements of what we’re doing with new technologies in 'Guitar Hero 6' and beyond, but one of the areas we’re exploring certainly is camera technology and what you can do — track your movements and maybe have your characters on the screen do certain things you’re doing, or personalise it more so it can look more like you on stage rather than just be an avatar,” Huang explained.

When asked about the possibility of offering a subscription service for Guitar Hero content, not unlike online personalised music players, Huang was excited. “That’s definitely one of the things we would love to do,” he said. “There are a lot of issues around music licensing. Consumers want it; I know I want it. We’re trying to make that happen.” Whether or not ‘consumers’ (being us) really want it is a matter up for debate and heavily dependent on its cost and the content made available. If the catalogue is extensive and of a high quality we could probably get on board with that.

And even though Activision wants to cut back on the number of ‘Hero’ games in the future Huang has plenty of ideas of genres RedOctane could be covering in the future to reach new audiences. “We’re really just at the beginning of music games,” he told the Seattle Times. “What we love and what we’re constantly looking at is, how do you expose people to new music and new instruments? In the US, country music is obviously very popular. Globally, classical music has always been very interesting. Latin music – there are just so many different genres of music and instruments that haven’t been tapped into yet.”

Seattle Times [Via Kotaku]