A bunch of games journalists around the world have pooled their experiences regarding the difficulty in finding a DJ Hero match online. For something that is roughly a month old and highly-rated, it seems that finding a match can take up to half an hour, if you find one at all, and people seldom play on any difficulty above medium.
I thought this kind of attitude regarding community-building was exclusive to local gamers, but it seems that I was wrong, and that it’s a common problem worldwide. Quite a surprise that. You’d think that with millions of connected gamers all over the world, finding a match wouldn’t be a problem. Now, I’m not much of an online gamer, to be honest – the occasional match of UT3 will do me – but I can still find online matches for obscure, un-applauded multiplayer modes like that in Condemned 2. So what exactly is up with this DJ Hero thing, I’m not sure.
It's well made and the game is fun - but nobody cares.
Comments
Posted On
Jan 11, 2010Posted By
Miktar DraconSimple – as someone who plays DJ Hero regularly, it’s just not an online competitive type of game. The VS mode is really kind of tack’ed on to mark the checkbox for ‘online multiplayer’, but the appeal of DJ Hero is to play the songs in your own time and setting, it’s just not the type of game that begs for VS play.
Not exactly rocket science.
Posted On
Jan 12, 2010Posted By
Matthew ViceReally? I think it might also have to do with the less than stellar sales of the product too. But I also find it odd that there are always people playing some obscure title like Condemned 2 onlne. Now, the game was great, and as far as I know, it did OK in sales… not good enough to go platinum obviously – or if it did, I haven’t seen it. Its multiplayer modes are really nothing to write home about, but as an experiment, I checked it out after looking at this DJ Hero article and, sure enough, people are playing it and I didn’t have any trouble finding games to join. An I’m talking about the PS3 version, too.
Looking at the next news item about how few people buy DLC or even go online with their consoles, I think the problem might lie elsewhere, too. If this keeps up, I think the whole prediction of games distribution becoming entirely digital is not going ot happen as soon as people think.
Posted On
Jan 12, 2010Posted By
Miktar DraconDJ Hero’s sales have been less than stellar, that’s true (though still miles better than Tony Hawk’s Ride), though I always expected DJ Hero to be a slow-burn, only picking up once the price goes down from $120. Sure enough, after it dropped to $90 over xmas here in the US, there was a huge boost in sales, though I think the game still has to break the 400,000 unit mark. The niche appeal of DJ Hero, along with the high price point, was always going to make it a hard sell.
But you’re right on the money though with the digital distribution thing – the industry and media pundits love to shove DD as the ‘future’ as if it’s already a done deal, when the reality is, it’s still far too untested and niche an avenue, and hardly as ‘mainstream’ as the media and publishers like to make it sound. It will happen, eventually, but I don’t expect DD to be the main avenue for sales anytime within the next 5 years, at the least. Hell, even most of the US still doesn’t have broadband, due to its large landmass – only the major cities have the fabled high-speed internet connections, and even THEN, it’s odd that the Gamestops and such make a KILLING on selling second-hand games… and Gamefly also makes a killing renting out retail discs, when people could just buy/download? Yeah, I think the DD thing is very much overstated.