Aug
11
Hard copies mailed to Mr. Alex Rigopulos and Mr. Eran Egozy
Hard copies CC: Mr. Mike Dornbrook (Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, Harmonix), Mr. Greg LoPiccolo (Vice President of Product Development, Harmonix), John Riccitiello (Chief Executive Officer, EA)
Email only CC: Floyd Watkins (PR Operations Coordinator, EA)
I bought a Playstation 3 in March of 2008 for (at the time) the sole reason of playing Rock Band. Dollar for dollar it was the best option at the time. I brought the game home, unpacked it, and my wife and I jammed until the following morning. The game excels in every aspect and after spending more than $750 just to play it, we concluded it was worth every penny.
As soon as they were available I purchased a second official guitar controller for the game. We were finally able to have 4-person jams and get full band unison bonuses during the songs. It was awesome, even though the guitar was DOA (stuck yellow fret button) and had to be replaced. Your replacement process was first rate, though.
Aside from the guitar, I’ve also pumped a sizeable amount of coinage into the Rock Band store. We currently have over a gigabyte of paid-for downloaded music content and do not regret a single music pack or song purchase, though, you really should choose NIN songs that don’t end up being boring to play (”Burn”, who would’ve thought?!) or don’t have enough guitar to sync up with requiring you to play a piano on the guitar controller for 2 minutes (”The Collector). STILL, , it’s awesome, and we consistently buy new content almost every week. The fact that all our content will be compatible with Rock Band 2 (day 1 purchase, by the way) is great and very pro-consumer.
I recently encountered an issue, though, that is surprisingly anti-consumer. My PS3’s blu-ray drive died yesterday. As such it will need to be sent in for repairs and in all likelihood I will be sent a different PS3 refurb unit. I do not mind having to redownload all my track packs (I understand the nature of the DRM and don’t begrudge it) but what I do mind is that my Rock Band save game file is the only save game file on my PS3 that I cannot back up. This means that all of my bands’ progress, our customized characters, the money we’ve accumulated, the stars we’ve received, etc, will be lost.
I can understand the fear that people will pass their saved games around the net, allowing people to access tracks that had yet to be unlocked and all that jazz, but such a practice and conscious implementation does not take into account the very real possibility of system repairs. Really, since the PS1 days, systems have progressively become more unreliable with each generation. It’s no joke that a sizable number of the PS2s in people’s homes are replacements for the first year’s worth of shipped systems that ended up having dead disc lasers, and I remember having to flip a PS1 upside down and on a 40 degree angle to get it to play games after awhile. The fact that my PS3 died after 5 months is not surprising, particularly considering the failure rates of its direct competitor.
Yes, my wife and I will start the game over and re-unlock everything as we enjoy having people over to play the 4-man game which would be pretty lame if we only had access to a few songs. I will not be buying the next Guitar Hero game, not only because Rock Band is already wicked awesome but also because of the amount of money I’ve put into the game. Point being, you have not lost a customer, but you have made one quite upset nonetheless. I hope you “unlock” the save game file in Rock Band 2 for the PS3 as I’m relatively certain my PS3 will die again in the future, and having to go through it all a second time will be far too much to ask of a legitimate and loyal consumer.
Sincerely,
Ryan Couldrey
[signed]
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One Response to “Dear Mr. Alex Rigopulos and Mr. Eran Egozy, Co-Founders of Harmonix”
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I have to cosign that the systems seem to become more and more unreliable as time passes… the more detailed they get, the more glitches and issues there are. It’s unfortunate because so much time and money goes into them…