Why DJ Hero failed

An interesting post, and the first thing that I've read on livejournal in a long while.

As a guy who just finished university, I've played more than my fair share of guitar hero and rock band. I like the games, and rhythm games in general.

To address the author's points:

* Maybe I'm not the typical person, but I would have no problem paying $120 for songs that I don't know. In each guitar hero or rock band game, I estimate that I know fewer than half of each set list, but I still enjoy the games.

* I played the demo in the store. I was too focussed on the controls the first time I played to give half a hoot about whether what I was listening to was any good.

* Finally, and this is the meat of the post - the game is too hard for a mainstream audience. I agree with the sentiment, but disagree with many of the points he makes to get there.

I completely agree with him. I'm a bemani fan in general and like Beatmania IIDX quite a bit. A friend of mine bought DJ Hero and was eager to show it to me. I was confused playing it for the first 10 minutes or so. Awkward playing it for the first hour or so. I figured it out, but the disconnect is certainly there.

Beatmania (especially IIDX) offers all the flair and style of DJ'ing without that disconnect. It's a really simple game conceptually (in fact, Guitar Hero is almost the exact same game). IIDX has been massively successful (granted, in Japan only). Had Konami tried to make Beatmania like actual DJ'ing, it would have flopped too (and since it was literally the first ever music game, that would have been an interesting alternate history).

I actually received this for Christmas and I absolutely love it. DJ Hero seemed to be on sale all over the place too before Christmas. I imagine these kinds of games sell themselves better when played at someone's house than at the store. I just had some friends come over last night who had heard of it but never checked it out and now love it!

It does help that I really enjoy this kind of music over the stand-alone songs found on GuitarHero/RockBand.

Short version of the article: DJ Hero failed because it's awesome.

I kid. It's a fun read. However, in this context calling it failed seems to only apply if marketplace competition is a zero-sum game.

Perhaps we could say instead that it succeeded in the audience of gamers who want a challenging DJ game?

I think it's interesting because it looks at how they've misunderstood who their market really is.

I disagree with the post. It failed for 2 reasons:

1) DJs are not mainstream (as opposed to rock bands). Mashups are not mainstream.

2) We have a bad economy. People can't afford to buy a new $100 video game accessory.

I did an analysis of this when it came out. They could have cut half the controls and still had an ample difficulty curve....

I wasn't interested in the game because it looked too much like Frequency and Amplitude, and I'm in the Harmonix camp.

It failed because of Activision's hubris in believing people were going to spend another $120 on a game after having had 5 Rock Band titles and 10 Guitar Hero titles. It failed because it asked people to aspire to be something nobody wants to be: a dorky DJ. Seriously? A DJ? Why not Jazz Flute Hero while we're at it?