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Music Media Entertainment Games

Next Year's Madden, Others to Get Music Download Service 37

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the john-i-think-he's-going-for-the-double-dip-maneuver-here dept.
Joystiq is reporting that next year's version of Madden, and other subsequent EA games, will offer the ability to download new background music tracks. They have not yet said if this would be a pay-per-song service. "It might seem a bit silly for EA to offer a proprietary music download service when all current-gen consoles allow users to create their own custom soundtracks from their already-existing digital music collections. You have to realize, though, that EA needs to offer its own downloads so it can [...] gently suggest the latest hot track from Kid Rock to their captive audience of millions of players."
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Next Year's Madden, Others to Get Music Download Service More

Next Year's Madden, Others to Get Music Download Service

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  • This is EA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Predathar ( 658076 ) on Thursday July 10, 2008 @10:45AM (#24134283)
    so of course it's going to be pay per song. Actually I think most companies would make it pay per song as well, but didn't EA start the whole micro payment thing anyway?
    • The Asian market made the whole micropayment thing really popular/proved it worked. Make a game free or absurdly cheap, and make up for it with micro purchases. Design an MMORPG just right and 90% of the players will end up having/wanting to buy stuff so they can fit in, and because the equipment is just a bit better.

    • No, they were just the most annoying with it. They asked you to pay to unlock content ALREADY ON THE DVD. Sorry for caps. Im still annoyed with that.

  • What ever happened to... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Thursday July 10, 2008 @10:57AM (#24134597)
    What ever happened to where game makers would create their own songs and people would buy the soundtrack? I remember back in the SNES/Genesis age, a lot of people would hum various Mario/Sonic tunes, sure they might have been low-quality but they were catchy. At least RPGs still have original soundtracks, I really don't want to play an RPG while hearing *insert song here* when an orchestrated soundtrack would be better. A theme song like on Namco's Tales games would be Ok, but really, do I even want to hear Kid Rock while I am playing a game? And even pay for it? No.
    • Amen. Almost no one has the same taste in music. I can't see this being a good thing. Worst case scenario - it comes with all Britney Spears tracks and your only option is to throw down money to buy new ones so you don't have to hear her. Best case scenario - it comes with a good variety of music but there's only 1 track you like and you end up stuck listening to it until you finally give up and buy more before you go insane. Either way... neither one is better than custom made songs for the game.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by andy19 ( 1250844 )
      Sports games are much different than RPGs, although in one NHL game (I think 2K7, I could be way off, someone correct me if I'm wrong) they had a great soundtrack with orchestrated music that dynamically changes based on what is happening on the ice. This was great because it really added some depth to the game and got you going when the action was really intense. Kid Rock just doesn't do the same.

    • This is major league sports (Score:4, Funny)

      by HalAtWork ( 926717 ) on Thursday July 10, 2008 @11:37AM (#24135715)
      This is major league sports, in actual life that stuff is 50% commercial anyway. They have theme songs, billboards, commercials dedicated to sports events, half time shows, etc etc... Only half of it is about the actual sport. They're only bringing the real experience home.

    • There are plenty of games with original scores for blockbuster games - look at the Halo series or things like Medal of Honor. A lot of time those licensing costs for pop songs are way more expensive than hiring a composer and an orchestra for few days (although EA has its own music label), so I don't think its a cost-cutting measure. (And hell, if you want an electronic soundtrack, you could probably hire an in house composer for salary and have them just crank out tunes for a bunch of games at once). I

      • A lot of time those licensing costs for pop songs are way more expensive than hiring a composer and an orchestra for few days (although EA has its own music label), so I don't think its a cost-cutting measure. (And hell, if you want an electronic soundtrack, you could probably hire an in house composer for salary and have them just crank out tunes for a bunch of games at once).

        Hey game companies, if you're hiring I'm available. My musical and technological credentials are solid, and I have a portfolio avai

        • " and that's true for just about every experienced game composer who isn't named K. Kondo, N. Uematsu, H. Tanaka, or Y. Koshiro"

          You're kidding yourself if you think any mainstream gamer knows those names or if that will affect thier purchase decision. More likely it will say "from the guy who created the soundtrack to Saving Private Ryan". There's actually a good deal of crossover between movie scores and game scores for big budget productions - there's really no difference anymore - no one is a "game com

        • But if I remember correctly, one of the reasons that Brawl was praised was because of the diverse musical score it had, and in fact the themes made by Nobuo Uematsu which is well known in the Final Fantasy community, contributed to that.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by morari ( 1080535 )

      Anyone know where I can download the Battletoads soundtrack?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )

        John Madden: Thank you for playing "Madden 2009". Do you have a song request?
        Homer: "It's Raining Men"!

    • They still have that. You can buy the Gears of War songtrack if you wanted it, and it only has one licensed song on it (Maaaaad Wooorld). You can do the same with MGS4, Halo (soundtracks come in licensed versions, and actual game soundtrack versions), every damn final fantasy game (and then you can go buy the soundtracks with all the songs done in piano, vocal only, remixed, and whatever you want). Most (and I really mean most) games still have soundtracks which you can buy, which are made up of primarily i
    • Whatever happened to the idea of loading song onto the hard drive of your console (or SD card in the case of the Wii) in MP3 format and having the game play those songs. Why make people pay for something that they should be able to do for free?

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by rugatero ( 1292060 )

        Why make people pay for something that they should be able to do for free?

        Unfortunately the guys that make the decision are more likely to ask 'Why let people do something for free when we could charge them for it?'.

  • In the year after the next's Madden you'll actually have to purchase the players from EA before actually playing the game. And the ball. And rent the stadium.
    You can also... erm... "tip" the referee by just entering your credit card information.

    • In the year after the next's Madden you'll actually have to purchase the players from EA before actually playing the game. And the ball. And rent the stadium.

      I think the NFL would recognize that stupidity and strip EA of the license. Then, we could all sit down and play a nice round of EA's XFL 2K10.

  • Sure, they'll let you buy the songs, but every time We Will Rock You or Rock and Roll Part 2 come on you'll get a bill from ASCAP/BMI. : p

  • It might seem a bit silly for EA to offer a proprietary music download service when all current-gen consoles allow users to create their own custom soundtracks from their already-existing digital music collections
    Well that's not true. The 360 can do it, sure, but it's not available at all on the Wii and it's optional (for the dev) on the PS3. So I'm gonna guess EA won't be enabling it for their PS3 games from now on :)

    Some games come with pretty awful music (I'm looking at you Puzzle Quest!) so the custom s

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 )

      As of the most recent PS3 firmware, you can play any background music you'd like off the console hard drive regardless of what game you're playing.

      On the Wii, there are games that allow custom MP3 soundtracks played off the SD card.

      I'm guessing you have a 360, but not a Wii or PS3?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by radish ( 98371 )

        As of the most recent PS3 firmware, you can play any background music you'd like off the console hard drive regardless of what game you're playing.

        Not according to ps3fanboy.com [ps3fanboy.com]:

        You also will not be able to use music from your hard drive, unless the game is specifically programed to take advantage of the feature. Unfortunately, no games will be able to take advantage of in-game custom soundtracks when the firmware update goes live. (However, future games and game patches can enable this feature. It depends

    • I don't see why EA couldn't do it on the Wii. Endless Ocean allows you to play songs from the SD Card when you're diving. Granted, they play the same song repeating forever, instead of continuing on with the next song, but there's no reason EA couldn't do this.
  • The first Madden year ( I wanna say it was 02 or 03 ) that offered EATrax had a very good sound track... but since then I enjoy maybe one or two songs off of their games per year. I'm obviously not the target audience for this service; but I guess it's nice of them to think of new ways to squeeze money out of their customers.

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