“Guitar Hero: Metallica” May Be The Right Game At The Wrong Time

mariasci | December 15, 2008 1:30 am

A couple of weeks back, we asked if the success of Guitar Hero and Rock Band have been overstated—that perhaps in the media’s endless search to find the new “something other than albums will save the record industry!” story, some obvious shortcomings were being overlooked. Well, as it turns out, these concerns were not misplaced. Electronic Arts, publishers of Rock Band, has issued another profit warning, and reports “disappointing sales figures,” while Guitar Hero is expected to see a 50% drop in unit sales. It’s not surprising that $200 games might not be doing too well in a down economy. But, despite Activision’s claims that that games are good for artists, they’re apparently not good enough: Edgar Bronfman is demanding more money for licensing songs for gameplay, claiming that they don’t bring in enough money per track. And into this gloomy environment steps Metallica, who are getting their own edition of Guitar Hero.

As with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the band will appear in the game, and have attended a motion-capture session that will get their particular moves into the game. But the non-Metallica songs in the game will have a real connection to the band:

About 40% of the 45-plus songs will be from artists that influenced Metallica, played concerts with them or appeared on 1998 covers album Garage Inc. Among them: Queen, the Foo Fighters, Alice in Chains, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Seger, Kyuss and Samhain.

Very exciting! Also exciting: you can purchase a double kick drum pedal to really be like Lars.

First look: Metallica gets ‘Guitar Hero’ treatment [USA Today] Rock Games Singing Sad Songs, Waltzes [Songs For Soap]