Comment from Nate
Date: March 29, 2008, 1:26 pm

How is putting down the controller, picking up a phone, calling the number, reading the text message and email, then going to Amazon.com to download the song seamless. Sounds like a pain in the ass to me. Not to mention there is no way that by calling a number, they know what song is playing on a particular game. If they do, a little too much Big Brother action going on here.

Comment from Mikel
Date: March 29, 2008, 1:29 pm

no nate, you use the in-game phone in your car silly

Comment from pen
Date: March 29, 2008, 3:59 pm

Is innovative another word for convoluted and unnecessary?

Comment from Nate
Date: March 29, 2008, 4:35 pm

well don’t i feel like an idiot

Comment from Mike
Date: March 29, 2008, 6:35 pm

30 days, 2 hours and 20 minutes till GTA IV!!!

Comment from Mike
Date: March 29, 2008, 6:37 pm

As you guys can tell I’m a tad bit excited about this game. I even requested a weeks vacation to play it.

My favorite videogame series, GTA, April 29th, and then my favorite band, Disturbed, new CD 5 weeks later. Kick ass!!!

Comment from Mikel
Date: March 29, 2008, 8:45 pm

Pen, it’s not unnecessary because this is 2008 and we unfortunately have to find crazy and idiotic ways to be innovative to sell music. It’s a neccesary evil I suppose

Comment from Chris
Date: March 29, 2008, 9:04 pm

Jay said it best in the article about Sony launching a digital service..

“hey, let’s throw ideas against a wall and see what sticks”

Comment from Jason
Date: March 30, 2008, 12:09 am

Much too complicated. Music lovers don’t want to go through this much hassle just to get songs. This will fail miserably.

Comment from Mikel
Date: March 30, 2008, 9:24 am

the guitar hero idea has succeeded far beyond expectations, why couldn’t this?

Comment from Jay
Date: March 30, 2008, 9:38 am

Lemme throw another idea out there… the people I know who play video games like GTA play it quite a bit. Like a lot. If they’re playing the game that often, they hear those songs all the time. So why on earth would they want to buy those same songs they hear all the time and listen to them when they’re not playing? For example, the only video game I ever play is Madden, and I really don’t play it that often. The first thing I do is go in and set the preferences so it only plays the rock songs (it’s mostly rap, which is likely the case with GTA). That leaves only a finite number of songs and they play ALL the time. I don’t play enough that I’m sick of them, but when I hear them on the radio I switch the station because I hear it too often.

It’s a dumb idea. I’d bet that the real intent is that you go on Amazon and see all the other songs by that artist and similar albums to that artist, and they hope you buy that. And I’ll bet your custom playlist will be plastered with those associated links. But they should just call it that instead of trying the back-door method. There’s no real draw to get them there in the first place because of what I mentioned above. How about adding tokens you can find in the game that will get you a free track from the game. Then when they go to redeem their free track, they can then be inundated with all the other music they can get on the cheap. It will encourage people to play the game for one more small reason, it gets product in front of the customer, and everybody wins. See how something so simple could work? I think if you go to business school or take those advanced business courses in college, it makes you overthink things. More of us non-business people need to start consulting companies.

And another thing, I still buy all my music from iTunes, and I haven’t bought anything with DRM in a while. Nor have I payed more than $0.99 for a track.

Comment from Mikel
Date: March 30, 2008, 9:43 am

I agree Jay that it is a dumb idea, but once again I have to bring up the guitar hero success. Those people hear those songs over and over again as well and they continue to sell millions. Plus, who’s to say that they don’t add to the library frequently to mix it up.

Comment from Jay
Date: March 30, 2008, 9:44 am

Oh, and patent pending on the ideas above Amazon and Rockstar Games (and everybody else). I will sue your butts off.

Comment from Jay
Date: March 30, 2008, 9:51 am

Yeah but in Guitar Hero you buy it in the game and you get to play those songs on the game. In this scenario, you have background music as part of the game, and you get to go to your computer later and buy the same songs just to listen to whenever you’re not playing the game.

Even if in Guitar Hero when you buy tracks you get the real mp3 for your computer (maybe it does already, I don’t know), it’s still the real version of the mp3 and it sounds different than the game. They’re two different things that can’t really be used as a measure of potential success for the other.

Comment from Mikel
Date: March 30, 2008, 9:54 am

I see your point Jay, but, if it does work, it won’t surprise me. Not much does in this industry anymore.

Comment from Deuce
Date: March 30, 2008, 11:20 am

I think that anything geared towards video games is going to sell, GTA being no exception. I have friends that still play the first one for hours and hours just running around aimlessly and killing people, so I can imagine there will be a ton of little kids that would love to spend their parents money on something like this. Its just really unfortunate that so many people would rather hear a few songs over and over, rather than listening to a full album. To each their own I guess…

Comment from Dave_APTQ
Date: March 30, 2008, 1:38 pm

Are video games that popular?

Comment from Deuce
Date: March 30, 2008, 1:59 pm

I think Guitar Hero III/Rock Band brought them back a bit.

Comment from Mike
Date: March 30, 2008, 9:11 pm

Yeah Dave, I think games are that popular. When Halo 3 came out on September 25th it’s broke the record of its predecessor as the most money earned by an entertainment thing (beating out any movie or CD) on its first day out. And GTA, being released on two systems instead of just one like with Halo 3, could very well surpass Halo 3’s record.

There will supposedly be a lot of hard to find songs and songs that bands made exclusive to this game, so some people will use this service, but it won’t be the next iTunes.

Comment from daedae
Date: March 31, 2008, 7:17 am

The real question I have about this is… what format are the songs going to be in for the game itself to play them? Seems like GTA3 just had a bunch of MP3s, at least on the PC version, so all you had to do was snoop around and find the files. Maybe I’m wrong though… and I guess that’s only useful for PC or 360 players, as there probably aren’t that many people with Blu-ray drives on PCs (so PS3 gamers would be out).