DJ Hero Message Board

DJ Hero developer FreeStyle Games is hiring a producer for IPTV gaming, according to a job listing on LinkedIn. The position will lead "the development of new multi-platform games with specific emphasis on online infrastructure-heavy video applications."

"IPTV" could mean any number of platforms, including set-top boxes such as Apple TV and Roku. The job listing noted that the developer is working on a "new ground-breaking multi-platform and mobile project."

FreeStyle Games posted a number of jobs to LinkedIn in the last week, including one for a mobile gaming producer role that will "develop strategies to leverage mobile enabled business models including free-to-play and freemium." That person would also be in charge of creating "features to bridge online, console and mobile games to create a connected product."

FreeStyle Games' most recent efforts were seen in Sing Party for Wii U, so the Activision-owned developer hasn't strayed too far from music-based games. Whether its next multi-platform and potentially free-to-play project falls in line with that genre remains to be seen.

Bobby Kotick earned more than $4.4 billion through Activision Blizzard last year, which means his business success is obvious -- but so are his failures. In an interview with Forbes, Kotick described the downfall of the Guitar Hero and DJ Hero franchises with the kind of detail that can only come from lying awake every night for four years straight, obsessing over what went wrong.
"So we bought the company, and after a few iterations of the game it became one of the most successful games of all time," Kotick said. "And then we didn't really take the time that we usually take to understand audience behavior.... But we created this critically acclaimed, highly rated game -- and these are the hardest failures, when you put your heart and soul into it and you deliver an extraordinarily well received game, and nobody shows up to buy it. So that's what happened with DJ Hero. At the same time we were so excited about going down this new direction with DJ Hero, I think we abandoned a bit of the innovation that was required in the Guitar Hero franchise.

"And so it was the double whammy of DJ Hero was unsuccessful, and then Guitar Hero became unsuccessful because it didn't have any nourishment and care." Kotick said ending the music-game franchises was a smart move, but that doesn't mean they'll be gone forever. "So we're going to take the products out of the market, and we're not going to tell anybody what we're doing for awhile, but we're going to stop selling Guitar Hero altogether," Kotick said. "And then we're going to go back to the studios and we're going to use new studios and reinvent Guitar Hero. And so that's what we're doing with it now."

Kotick promised Activision Blizzard listens to its consumers and will use fan input to innovate Guitar and DJ Hero. That Kotick plans to resurrect the series must mean some fans, somewhere, are inputting something other than "Kill it, Kotick."

#djhero I like video games. I like turntables. I like DJ Shadow, I like the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, the Scratch Perverts. Yet I've thought DJ Hero was a stupid idea from the moment the series was first announced. More »

Is "8linQ" a new form of L337ese spelling out "blink?" Inquiring minds want to know!

Joking aside, 8linQ is actually a new mobile studio, a joint venture between three groups: Music in Colour, Reactify and Metropolis Group. The former, Music in Colour, is a music production company comprised of ex-Freestyle Games developers, who you may know from those DJ Hero games. 8linQ will aim on bringing music and rhythm games to the mobile space starting on July 20 with Say What?! for iOS, The Guardian reports. No, we will not repeat ourselves, we're not falling for it, guys!

Say What?! is a tap-based rhythm game with licensed tracks from Sony, where players have to look for and identify icons associated with lyrics in the particular song they're playing. For example, when they see the word "I" in a lyric and an icon of an actual eye comes flying by, they'll tap that for points. As the player progresses in difficulty, the clues and correct icons become much more vague.

Say What?! will be a free download when it launches next week, bundled with four licensed tracks -- eventually, other tracks will be added as micro-transaction downloads.

[Image credit: The Guardian]

Here's the absolute dumbest thing you'll read this week: Eric Ruth's totally rad 8-bit de-make of DJ Hero has been removed from his official site following the issuing of a Cease and Desist letter from Universal Music Publishing Group. You can read the somewhat entertaining, genuinely frustrating exchange between Ruth and the Universal representative over on PikiGeek. Hey, man, we totally see where Universal is coming from. We were just about to buy the theme to Ghostbusters on iTunes, but we changed our mind at the last minute -- because we heard half of a mashed-up 8-bit version of the song on a freeware PC game.

Eric Ruth contacted us with his comment on the ordeal, explaining that even though he's disappointed, "Between mirroring, uploading, fttps, and torrents, I know that Pixel Force: DJ Hero will live on through the vast reaches of the internet long after Mr Grannis and Universal Music go to bed at night." The legal hurdle didn't seem to break his developmental stride, either -- he added that his next project, Pixel Force: Halo, is well underway, with a trailer planned for later this month and a tentative release window of January 2011. Now, let's just hope this one doesn't have any illicit Ray Parker, Jr. covers.

#pullquote That's what a lawyer representing Universal Music Publishing Group told the creator of 8-Bit DJ Hero, which resulted in one of the year's best parody games being yanked off the internet. More »

Eric Ruth Games' Pixel Force DJ Hero is no longer just an idle YouTube distraction, something to load up in the background so you can listen to chiptune Joan Jett/Queen mashups while you write Joystiq posts (or whatever it is you do while listening to chiptune mashups). You can now actually download and play the NES-style rhythm game "demake" for yourself!

Even better news: Ruth also released a new video, featuring an awesome chip mashup of the Ghostbusters theme and Huey Lewis & The News' "I Want a New Drug." So you have something to listen to a few dozen times if you have some more posts to write (or, again, whatever your job may be) before checking out the actual game.

#demakes Eric Ruth's 8-Bit version of Activision's DJ Hero is now available to download and play, complete with six chiptune mashups that put DJ Hero 2's soundtrack to shame. Who's up for some Dead or Alive Vs. Siouxsie and the Banshees? More »

Ladies and gentlemen, do you believe in second chances? Amazon's offering those who missed out on the recent Toys R' Us markdown a chance to pick up DJ Hero for the discounted price of $40 for the current Deal of the Day promotion. Not quite as hot as a $20 price tag, but a sweet deal nonetheless.

In a recent interview with Develop, FreeStyleGames creative director Jamie Jackson recounted the emotional rollercoaster ride the studio went through from the announcement to the release of their ambitious mixmastering sim, DJ Hero. Well, using that metaphor, said rollercoaster would be awfully boring -- everything leading up to the game's release only served to bring the studio down. Jackson explained, "when the first news of the game came out, and everyone slagged it off, the whole studio was depressed, because we'd given our life to it." (Yeah, sorry about that.)

Jackson explained that morale was low in the following months -- that is, until the universally positive reviews started pouring in. "Everyone else's opinion on the game had just turned during the release," Jackson said. "When the review scores came in that just changed the mood of the studio dramatically." We're sure the 1.2 million sales over the following eight months didn't hurt either.

Some of you lucky jerks might be living near a Toys R Us that didn't immediately sell out of Band Hero and DJ Hero earlier today -- a side-effect of a two-day, $50 discount on the two titles. Not excited? Here, we'll help you out with a little equation: DJ Hero = $70 - $50 = $20 = TOTALLY INSANE.

Retro gaming enthusiast and part-time mad genius Eric Ruth recently pulled the dust cover off of his latest 8-bit de-make of a current-gen title. This time, it's FreeStyleGames' vinyl-scratching sim DJ Hero. "But how," you may ask, "how does he get DJ Hero, a game with its own, highly complex peripheral, to work using the eight-buttoned NES controller?" In response, we simply laugh. You obviously don't know how Eric Ruth rolls.

Check out a video demo of the game posted after the jump, and join us in furiously wondering what an 8-bit Peter Gabriel/Kenny Loggins mash-up sounds like.

#demakes The man responsible for the 8-bit version of zombie shooter Left 4 Dead has turned his "de-make" skills to another recent franchise—Activision's DJ Hero. Pixel Force: DJ Hero, as it's known, is musically true to its 80s roots. More »

You may think you're the master disc jockey supreme, what with your basic edition of DJ Hero -- or, as we like to call it, the baby edition for babies -- but it's really high time you upgrade to Renegade. Thank to a deal on Amazon, you can now do so at the significantly reduced price of $64.90.

Activision's DJ Hero may not have had the strong start the company would have hoped for, but it's apparently gained significant momentum since its October launch. In an editorial piece defending the performance of Bizarre's recent racer, Blur, Activision social media guy Dan Amrich talked up DJ Hero's longterm success -- which has now yielded sales of 1.2 million units.

As you might recall, it was also the best-selling IP of 2009 by revenue. Amrich posited that DJ Hero needed "time for its audience to find it, a price break, and positive word from both friends and reviews to circulate" before it could really pick up steam. With DJ Hero 2 just around the corner, we're anxious to see how Activision will apply what it's learned from the first game.

Award-winning hits available as downloadable songs and mixes from world renowned pop sensations.

#beautifulpeople One of the ways celebrities are different from you and me is that they might spend their 21st birthday party with their model girlfriend on a 140-foot yacht. And DJ Hero would be the sponsor. More »

Amazon has the DJ Hero "Renegade Edition" at a deep discount for the moment. The set, regularly priced at $200, has had its price scratched and dropped like a beat to something slightly more reasonable. The bundle is avaiable on all the major consoles at various discounts:

• Wii -- $75.49
• PS3 -- $77.88
• Xbox 360 -- $101.45

The Wii Renegade Edition is even cheaper than the regular version! The sale has no specified end date, but don't dawdle if you're interested. Of course, if this discount doesn't sell the units, they'll probably be offered when DJ Hero 2 launches in gumball machines for a quarter -- like, a really giant gumball machines.

[Via GamerDeals]

Activision has confirmed on its conference call today that Guitar Hero 6 will be on store shelves sometime this fall, with a new DJ Hero game coming soon after. The music game market is a changing place, admitted CEO Bobby Kotick -- it will "continue to compress," with fewer titles and brands finding success. Activision has "moved from the sell-through of higher-priced peripherals," and its new plan is for "improved economics on a higher percentage of software sales."

Kotick said that Guitar Hero "remains the leader in the category with more than 44 million games sold to date," and that both releases this year would be followed with "a full lineup of exciting downloadable content."

Wanna know the most stylish, funkiest manner in which a person can simultaneously dislocate both of their wrists? We wager it's by playing the three mixes which will be added to DJ Hero on April 29 as part of the "Domination Pack." The three punishing tunes included in the DLC are:

• Darude's "Sandstorm" mixed with Josh Wink's "Higher State of Consciousness"
• Wolfgang Gartner's "Wolfgang's Fifth Symphony" (Beat Juggle)
• Danny Byrd's "Red Mist VIP" (Beat Juggle)

A video of the Wolfgang track is posted after the jump. Just watching it makes our brains, hands and fingers hurt.

[Thanks DirtyBeefz!]

If you skipped out on last year's crossfading, record-scratching simulator DJ Hero due to its once-outlandish price, you're running out of excuses to not pick it up. Toys 'R Us recently knocked the price of the 360, Wii and PS3 (but puzzlingly, not the PS2) versions of the game down to a scant $49.99 -- a significant decrease from its launch price of $120.

Still wondering whether the game's worth your hard-earned Grantpaper? That's a decision you have to make on your own -- though, wait! Dizzee Rascal is here to help! Oh, and so's Chuck Brown! And look, it's Daft Punk! How nice of them to aid you with your soul-searching.

#complaint The news this morning that Konami will publish Def Jam Rapstar raises hope among the hip-hop-minded among us that maybe, finally, the world will get its first — or second, you may argue — great rap game. More »

DJ Hero turntable controllers are now available in standalone versions to scratch on all major consoles... wait, that sounds wrong. The peripheral is currently listed on retailer Amazon for $60, which is $20 off the Wii game bundle, and $40 off the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. The second peripheral can be used for several different modes the game supports.

The first 100,000 standalone units also include a Shepard Fairey poster (pictured), featuring the game's cast of DJs. If you're a hardcore fan of the turntable series, chances are you've already picked up a second controller by now and traded the extra copy into Gamestop. For the rest of us, with DJ Hero 2 somewhere out there, we'd be more apt to wait and see if there's an updated controller with the sequel.

I got two turntables and a...poster.

#dlc DJ Hero, a game that's not seen downloadable content since November, gets a much-needed shot of new content next week, with a trio of mash-ups featuring Eminem and JAY-Z. More »

Scr-scr-scratched through all of DJ Hero's tracks? Activision has announced a new DLC mix pack featuring Renegade Edition headliners Eminem and Jay-Z. The collection is scheduled to drop on Xbox Live, PSN and Wii this month and includes:

• "Shake That" by Eminem mixed with "Show Me What You Got" by Jay-Z
• "Without Me" by Eminem mixed with "Encore" by Jay-Z
• "Can I Get A..." by Jay-Z mixed with "Lose Yourself" by Eminem

The new tracks will be available on March 18 on Xbox Live for 640 ($8) and March 25 on PSN for $7.99. The tracks will not be sold separately for Xbox 360 or PS3. Each track, however, will be available for the Wii version on March 25 as a downloadable single for 300 Wii Points ($3); $9 for all three.Eminem & Jay-Z all mixed up in new DJ Hero DLC pack

New downloadable content coming from giants of rap.

Activision plans to cut down on the number of Hero games in 2010. According to Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith in a conference call, the company expects the music game business to decline further as "the casual consumer proves less robust" and people are saturated enough with instrument controllers that they start buying only new discs.

"Fewer SKUs will service a broader audience," Griffith said. "In 2009 we released 25 music SKUs, and in 2010 we plan to release less than 10." The cuts will come in the form of PS2 versions and Band Hero bundles (leaving only standalone discs for that game), as the company focuses on Guitar Hero and DJ Hero releases in the "back half of the year."

That 25 SKU number, by the way, is a pretty conservative estimate. We added up just each console version of Guitar Hero Metallica, Guitar Hero Smash Hits, Guitar Hero 5, Guitar Hero Van Halen, Guitar Hero On Tour Modern Hits, DJ Hero, and Band Hero -- not counting various instrument bundles or special editions, and not counting cell phone versions -- and came up with 26. If you were to add things like the Renegade Edition of DJ Hero and add standalone disc releases to instrument bundles, that number would go up significantly.