Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

What Went Wrong With DJ Hero

The gaming industry has had its ups and downs this week, that's for sure. First came the EA layoffs, then the news that game sales were down 11 percent in October, the eighth month in a row that sales were down year-over-year.

Of course, there were also the sales of the latest Call of Duty game, which were so huge that they made the national news, with anchors loudly predicting that it could be the biggest-selling game ever.

And then, there was DJ Hero, a game that suffered sales so bad they were embarassing. It looked at first like a formula that could at least be a cult hit - hip-hop, a "Hero"-style music game, a huge promotional push during the world series. All this resulted in total sales, to date, of less than 150,000 across four platforms.

The question is, where did they go wrong, and what can aspiring gaming industry types learn from this?

The Rebirth of Old Tech and Everything Old Becoming New Again

In the middle of all the tech news that broke among the last couple of days – and there's been quite a bit of it – one small nugget of information may have been overlooked, and that is the fact that Sony has revived the Walkman as an MP3 player.

If you're Generation Y, the name Walkman may not mean much to you. But for Generation X and Cuspers (those too young to be true Baby Boomers but too old to be true Gen-Xers), the name is iconic. The Walkman was the very first portable music player, a cassette deck on a neck leash with attached headphones.

The very fact that such a name is still alive in the age of the iPod is a sign that everything old really can be new again.

You Say You Want a Revolution

Today, Harmonix' Beatles Rock Band was released. This is big, so big that major news networks covered the release – it's being seen as a shot in the arm for both the video game and music industries (since a remastered catalog of the band's albums is being released at the same time).

Here at Fan to Pro, we say the video game industry is still very healthy indeed, but the release of this particular game may represent an industry shift anyway – getting consoles into homes that ordinarily wouldn't think of buying them.

MySpace's Revival Strategy and When Thinking Small Is Good

MySpace looked, for awhile, like it was on the way out. They'd lost the social networking battle to Facebook, big-time, they had a well-publicized personnel cut. Just about everyone had written them off - including, admittedly, this blogger.

But the service has recently made a move that looks like it may position them with a productive niche audience – they acquired social media music service iLike. So they may not be everyone's service of choice, but serious music fans? Oh, yes.

Fan to Pro Directions NOT To Pursue

We're all about converting your dreams, and the knowledge you gained from your fandom activities, into all sorts of careers. But are there times when you shouldn't embrace a specific career your dreams led you to?

Yes, there are - and the careers in question are ones that are being pushed aside by a changing world.