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The triumphant return of 'Rock Band'?
After several years on hiatus, an official announcement and the shockingly rapid decline of the music game market, Rock Band suddenly leapt back to life this month. Harmonix Music Systems -- the studio responsible for the music game craze, and the studio that created Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Dance Central -- announced new tracks heading to the Rock Band online store, which works with both Rock Band 3 and Rock Band Blitz. Why in the world is Harmonix releasing new tracks as paid, downloadable content for games that only exist on previous generation consoles? The official word is full of public relations obfuscation: "We had an exciting opportunity to add new content to the already-massive Rock Band library with a song from Arctic Monkeys – a band that's never been in a Rock Band title before! – as well as new music from fan favorites Avenged Sevenfold and Foo Fighters. We couldn't pass it up. Also, we wanted to see if we could still do it. Turns out we can. It's sort of like riding a bike." Great. That out of the way, what's really happening? Companies don't just casually release new content for years old games. That's not a thing that happens. I'd call it "testing the waters."
Hands-on with the first SmartGlass app, Dance Central 3's Party Time DJ
Since getting outed just head of Microsoft's big reveal, Xbox 360's SmartGlass has been under wraps. When Xbox Live VP Marc Whitten officially introduced SmartGlass soon after at E3 2012, we learned a teensy bit more -- tablets and smartphones (Android, Windows Phone 8, and iOS, even) would get second-screen functionality via an upcoming free application -- and got some hands-on time with it. That application has yet to launch, but Dance Central 3's SmartGlass functionality is already here. Well, almost here -- the game becomes publicly available tomorrow, and the app won't launch for a few weeks still -- but we got our hands on Dance Central 3's SmartGlass companion app a bit early at a New York City review event last week. Being the first SmartGlass application to launch has its advantages, such as setting the bar. By no means is Dance Central 3's SmartGlass application a thorough, necessary accompaniment (for a game that already requires Kinect, that's probably a good choice), but it does add some neat side fun for friends waiting in the wings to get their respective grooves on. "Party Time DJ" allows friends -- employing their iOS, Droid, or WP8 tablet/smartphone, via the Xbox SmartGlass app -- to queue up the next song in the game's neverending "Party Time" mode, or create a playlist. They can also queue downloadable tracks to the Xbox 360 (which thankfully requires approval on the 360 prior to purchase), or swap difficulty settings. Sadly, though the opportunity for real-time griefing presents itself rather clearly here, developer Harmonix chose not to allow song-swapping or difficulty changes mid-song. "Because it would kill them," Harmonix rep Nick Chester told us.%Gallery-168336%
