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Rock Band series remains unprofitable to date

October 23, 2009 in News comments 12

While Viacom, the owner of Harmonix's Rock Band game series, has been vocal in touting impressive sales numbers for the hit music title, what seemed to have been completely glanced over was a recent report by Credit Suisse which indicates that the game series simply has not been profitable since day one.

John Master Lee via thekartel.com »
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  • 0
    Aussie Legend Oct 24, 09
    *looks over at guitar hero*

    Least these guys care about the customer.
  • 0
    Ammy and Issun Oct 24, 09
    I always found that Rock Band was better then Guitar hero
  • 1
    Slumpy monkey Oct 24, 09
    Good, their shit at globalisation.
    • 1
      Audioslave Oct 24, 09
      I agree with you one hundred percent.
  • 0
    reaver11 Oct 24, 09
    I find this hard to believe as they make they're money through the massive DLC. But if you ask me, they've invested too much in peripherals. They need to slow down on the Special Editions. I know not everyone has a drum set/guitar/mic, but the amount of people who do certainly outweighs that crowd. Its pointless to make 100,000 SE when only around 30,000 would buy them.

    But I don't really care about the numbers. They make they're money back in the DLC they put out.

    And they're better than GH in every way possible. They give a shit about they're fans and what they want.
  • 0
    Daweii Oct 24, 09
    Reaver it's not peripherals. It's song licencing, it is the one thing that costs developers of games like this more than anything. It's like Beatles Rock Band, before they even sat down to contemplate the instruments or the game itself they had a $10 million upfront fee for the songs they wanted. It's a deal in the long term worth close to $40 million for the Beatles from Viacom's pocket, but DLC doesn't work as they are also spending more money licencing tracks there at varied costs. Rock Band is a venture that is obviously costing them far more than they can ever make... Totalling up the figures in that article the number is around $385 million to make Rock Band work, many games are made with $10 million and still fail to recoup losses.
  • 0
    King X2 Oct 28, 09
    Cool. Rock Band is awesome. All I can say.
    • 0
      Onvacation Oct 28, 09
      how can being unprofitable possibly be cool?
      • 0
        King X2 Oct 29, 09
        I misread the title, simply put. My bad.

        My last sentence still remains.
  • 0
    Shinobi_razor Oct 28, 09
    yep, song licensing. thats the down side to boasting master versions of almost every song, unlike GH in which covers are majority. and thats one reason RB > GH.

    hey, the PS3 was unprofitable for quite a while, now look at it.
  • 0
    FinalFantasyFanaticc Oct 29, 09
    Don't care if it's unprofitable, it's still tons of times better than the Guitar Hero crap Activision keep pumping out.
  • 0
    Bale Fire Oct 29, 09
    I guess their hoping in the long term they can build up an archive of awesome songs and a big fanbase, meaning they can just mooch off the sales they've made so far.

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