The Cars' 1978 debut album, "The Cars"
As the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises compete for
the hearts and minds of ersatz rockers around the world, both sides are
doing their best to lock up exclusives. For instance, there's the
recently released Aerosmith team-up with Guitar Hero, an an arrangement
whose exclusivity was first reported on Level Up
by Newsweek writer Ashley Harris. Rock Band has made similar arrangements
with bands like The Who. We asked Harris to look into whether The Cars,
whose eponymous debut record was the second full-length album released
on the Rock Band Music Store, had entered into a comparable agreement
with Harmonix and MTV Games for Rock Band. Harris contacted Rhino
Records, a division of Warner Music Group, for comment. Here's what
spokesperson Jason Elzy had to say:
The deal we made for The Cars is a full album game download and
Rock Band is the only game title out there putting full albums up as
downloadable content. Having said this, we would not license the full
album out for a similar use; however, we can and will (when opportunity
presents itself) license single tracks from this album for other games.
Nonetheless, moving forward we will be licensing more full albums from
the Warner Music Group Catalog for game download to Harmonix for Rock
Band.
As Elzy said, it's possible that singles from "The Cars" could
appear in Guitar Hero, Rock Revolution and other rhythm games, but the
entire album will be exclusive to Rock Band for an unspecified duration.
The
more we think about it, however, song exclusivity is far less of a
problem than instrument incompatibility. After all, the Wife Acceptance
Factor for two full sets of faux plastic instruments likely hovers
somewhere between slim and none. That said, Activision has said that
its Guitar Hero World Tour instruments will be compatible with Rock
Band 1 and that Guitar Hero World Tour will be compatible with
Rock Band 1 instruments. So let there be detente, Red Octane/Activision
Blizzard and Harmonix/MTV Games/Electronic Arts. For with so much past,
present and future rock to be brought to the rhythm game stage,
multiple titles with compatible instruments means a larger and more
varied library of music for all of us to play.
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