Xboxist

Is DJ Hero Too Expensive?

Mike Griffith, the CEO of Activision, really likes peripherals. He also evidently really likes games that come pre-packaged with peripheral controllers that can be sold at additional profit. This certainly hasn't hurt the company's bottom line, since its Guitar Hero franchise has moved an astonishing 15 million copies since Activision took over publishing in 2006. The company's upcoming game, Tony Hawk: Ride will also ship with a skateboard peripheral that users can slide around with on their living room floors. Clearly, there is a pattern emerging here.

"They're going to be a big part for the rest of this cycle," Griffith recently told journalists. "The consumer has seen the advances in this technology, and seen peripherals take advantage of technology to deliver a more physical interface. The consumer has been very accepting of that and it's bought new consumers into gaming. We're as much focused on giving the consumer a great experience as we are giving the share holder a return on their investment. We don't really break our goals out item by item but I can tell you our objectives of delivering a return apply across the board."

We take those comments to mean that rather than subsiding the price of the controller, Activision views hardware sales as another potential source of profit alongside its software. DJ Hero will sell with a price tag of $120 when it launches in the United States. In Europe, where video game related goods are notoriously expensive, the title will sell for £108, which comes out to about $177. DJ Hero comes with a turntable-like controller that registers some lateral movement and has color-coded buttons on the top where record-moving fingertips would normally be.

If the developers of competing rhythm game Scratch: The Ultimate DJ can get their Numark-designed controller in at around the same or slightly lower price, then we can add one more reason to the list of things that might make Scratch better than DJ Hero.

DJ Hero in the club, gettin tipsy.