As a thank you to the positive reaction from their fans, Cosmonaut Games, the studio behind WiiWare title Dive: The Medes Island Secret, have released the original soundtrack for download.

The pack contains 11 remastered songs from the game, as well as bonus tracks that have never been heard before.

You can find the link to download the songs in Cosmonaut Games blog post here.

After reinventing The Beatles as video game cash cows, Harmonix have now set their goals to perform a similar feat with MTV pop punk deities Green Day. Black shirt and red tie-wearing fans the world over will be excited to know that the final tracklist to Green Day: Rock Band has now been announced. The choices are for the most part fairly obvious, featuring the band’s two most popular albums in their entirety: 1994′s “Dookie” and 2004′s “American Idiot”.

It’s no wonder that they have decided on going with the more popular choices,  but it could possibly alienate some of the more hardcore fans who would probably see more additions taken from “Insomniac” and “Nimrod”. Not to mention that the band’s two first albums “39/Smooth” and “Kerplunk” have been completely ignored. Presumably these gaps will be filled in with later DLC, in the same way that half of the songs from the band’s latest album “21^st Century Breakdown” will be on the game’s release day.

Tracklist:

21st Century Breakdown

¿Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl)

American Eulogy

American Idiot

Are We the Waiting

Basket Case

Before the Lobotomy

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Brain Stew

Burnout

Chump

Coming Clean

Emenius Sleepus

Extraordinary Girl

F.O.D.

Geek Stink Breath

Give Me Novacaine

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

Having a Blast

Hitchin’ a Ride

Holiday

Homecoming

Horseshoes and Handgrenades

In the End

Jaded

Jesus of Suburbia

Last Night on Earth

Letterbomb

Longview

Minority

Murder City

Nice Guys Finish Last

Peacemaker

Pulling Teeth

Restless Heart Syndrome

Sassafrass Roots

See the Light

She

She’s a Rebel

Song of the Century

St. Jimmy

The Static Age

Wake Me Up When September Ends

Warning

Welcome to Paradise

Whatsername

When I Come Around

Confirmed DLC:

21 Guns

¡Viva La Gloria!

Christian’s Inferno

East Jesus Nowhere

Know Your Enemy

Last of the American Girls

Independent research carried out across Europe by YouGov has discovered that Mario is the ‘best-loved videogame character of all time.’ He’s at least one of the most flaunted about anyway.

This groundbreaking exploration of discovery also revealed that Mario’s rather pleasing jingles are amongst the most well known in games, with the majority of Europeans surveyed instantly recognising them.

The Mario soundtrack was created by composer Koji Kondo for the original Super Mario Bros in 1985 who has also composed music for the Zelda and Starfox series, as well as a few others.

Mr Kondo has said to take a lot of his musical inspiration from Latin and jazz rock, which is perhaps a little challenging to pick up amongst the chirps and chimes of the original soundtrack.

The growth in digital app stores can’t have passed by the average Critical Gamer (see what I did there?). Every device has one, from the DSi to the Playstation 3, and they have opened up new distribution channels for existing developers and publishers, as well as enabling new, much smaller creators to be able to reach out to the consumer and sell them new, less commercially attractive products.

Downloading games is not the ‘new promised land’ which platform holders are telling us it is. Firstly it’s not even that new. I’ve been downloading games to my mobile phone since around 2003 on what was, I believe, a Nokia 3650. Back then it was left to the networks themselves to provide the content as the hardware companies didn’t yet have the coordination or even leverage over the consumer (and with the networks) allowing them to provide these products themselves.

The ‘app stores’ in place then were far from being the seamless and enjoyable experience that today’s stores offer (well most of them), however they were hardly difficult to navigate either. All one had to do was go through a few WAP pages and then after spending £1.50 or whatever the cost was, you had your application in your games or download folder on the phone. Indeed I remember getting a rather good platform version of Splinter Cell! The trade press at the time often had articles on how this was the future (well, actually it was the present) and how traditional videogame companies would have to take this market seriously.

Downloading games to PC is also something which is not new. Valve’s Steam service has been selling games since around 2004/5 but it’s been possible to buy games directly from developers since before that. Steam was a milestone as it brought the idea of a games marketplace embedded into a gaming virtual ‘space’ where people can compete, collaborate and share gaming news and content together into a well run and branded experience. In many ways, Steam and Xbox Live’s developments were in parallel and have clearly influenced each other.

So since about 2002 we have been downloading games in a big way, and along the way there have been some failed to attempts to ‘wrap’ it together into a seamless user experience. Examples include an online component of the failed Dreamcast console to ongoing attempts by the mobile phone networks to somehow convert their phoning and texting customers to downloading and surfing customers. The mobile networks even started installing their own software on certain handsets to try to ‘lock’ the user into their experience.

What has stopped these efforts being successful differ but common themes include not having any interesting content or games consumers want to download. Additionally, the slow speed of the connection or the clumsy way in which the apps are downloaded have helped in putting off the consumer. Price, of course, is a major barrier to getting consumers to try something new as well. In recent years a number of these issues have been overcome, most importantly the price of storage and the speed at which data can be downloaded to a device at home or one which is mobile.

On the console and PC front, Xbox and Steam (and to a lesser degree Metaboli and Direct 2 Drive type platforms) have become the de facto standard for downloading content to living room or desktop machines. Sony’s PSN and even Nintendo with its Wiiware and Virtual console have followed suit with less success. In the mobile space success, although always predicted to be around the corner, remained allusive. Traditional consoles such as the DS and PSP still used physical media and mobile phone companies and the hardware makers were failing to provide a suitable solution which was being adopted by the mainstream.

Then along came Apple. Famous for having made buying music online something everyone could do, they brought along the same business approach to applications for their handheld phone – the Iphone, and subsequently their Itouch product. Their store was simple for everyone involved in it to operate, supply and purchase from. Developers only had to pay $99 and they could develop for it which was a first as other platform holders required developers to purchase expensive SDKs needed to code and produce content for their services. Consumers liked the service as it was easy to see what was available, fast to browse and very fast to download. Additionally the prices for applications were very cheap with many of them offering free trial versions. The other major plus point for Apple was that their hardware was easy to use, and of course, a phone – something people want anyway.

Now what’s been great about Apple’s app store is that it demonstrated the viability of small, cheap to produce apps. Small indie developers could come up with a game design, which would never see the light of day in a boxed game, self publish it and have an income derived from their efforts. The result of this success has been copycat initiatives. Xbox Live has welcomed more independents even going as far as having a secondary store for smaller, even more indie games. These are not vetted by Microsoft but instead quality control is given to the developer and community audience. Nintendo released Wiiware, which includes new indie games, and Sony have encouraged similar projects onto their PSN network.

It’s the handheld market though, quite rightly, which has been shaken up most by Apple’s move into digital distribution and portable computing. Nintendo’s Dsi is clearly a stop gap before the DS2 which allows it to offer some of the same features the ‘Iphone generation’ have already become used to and now expect. Hence it has (for Nintendo) some basic social community features (upload your photos to facebook from the device) and most importantly it has the DSiware store. This is is Nintendo’s digital app store! Similar to Wiiware, this is clumsy and uses some kind of cut down browser (with no cache from what I can see). Purchasing points which can then be traded for applications works (but seems dated) and accessing the content once it’s downloaded is well implemented.

Sony have released their PSPGo, but the hardware aside, they have used this as an opportunity to launch the Minis, a range of small apps. These are so similar to Iphone apps, that many of them are Iphone apps! Also, all ‘triple A’ PSP titles are being released on the PSN store and much of the back catalogue too.

So where does all this digital activity leave us? Well, clearly there is still lots of opportunity and it’s still really great for consumers and developers as a whole. However, it’s not all great. We now have a new tussle between Apple’s agenda and Sony and Nintendo’s. Apple, as with music, does not really care about how much it sells the software for, and so far, it hasn’t really shown much interest in maintaining the standard, rather just the quantity. This makes sense as they are in the business of selling hardware, and they are really good at it! However both Sony and Nintendo need to have their platforms seen as different from the Iphone (and the many Iphone lookalikes being released on a weekly basis). Additionally they make much more money from the software than Apple.

Hence both Sony and Nintendo are at present putting significantly less content on their stores with limited weekly updates, with the hope of helping developers to maintain the value of their content for as long as possible. Indeed games on the PSN store and Dsiware are on average £1-£2 more expensive than on the Iphone, and rarely do you get a free trial version in advance. Nintendo have not helped their cause by putting clocks and calenders on the store which should already be installed on the device or which should be allowed to be downloaded for free – it would be a good way of having people regularly come back to and engage in the store. Whilst there, they then might buy a high quality app.

The problem traditional videogame companies may find is that it’s too late. Just as the music industry allowed Apple to change the pricing model overnight it would seem that the videogame companies have allowed Apple to do the same thing in their marketplace.

The upshot is clear; more people can find a market to distribute their goods. The bad news is that many of them will have to distribute them for free or near to free, or find that in the huge marketplace that is the Appstore no one can find your app. Even companies such as EA are struggling, not quite sure what kind of content to produce, and then how much to invest marketing it, when the return is potentially small.

“Apple has achieved over two billion downloads since the launch of its App Store on to a device base of over 50million iPhone and iPod touch devices, this suggest an average of 40 apps per device. The volume of apps being downloaded per user suggests that the user’s behaviour is mimicking that on browsers, with users viewing lots of different sites; however, there are only a few which users visit repeatedly.” said Adam Leach, Principal Analyst, Ovum.

“Although Apple’s download figures are impressive and act as a harbinger for the industry, it is important to consider that the typical high-end iPhone users are not representative of mobile users as a whole”

“Apple has demonstrated for the first time that demand for third party applications can drive demand for devices”

Ironically it would seem that Apple have learnt a lot from their gaming competitors. Just as with Nintendo’s own Pokemon franchise (which is a license to print money), Apple have realised that the application and game consumers like playing most is the App Store itself. They can’t help themselves and they just have to ‘catch em all’!

It’s clear that music games sell. Even WiiMusic. The reason why they sell is clear; people like music and they like it a lot!

However in recent years traditional music formats have not been selling. We have all read why, and normally those that comment and write about such matters immediately highlight illegal downloading and the fact that consumers are not willing to spend £1 on a single or £8 on an album.

I’m not going to dispute the effect piracy has had, and I could turn this article into a discussion on how the music industry made some awful short term decisions which helped devalue music and compound the effect of the digital download. Instead I’ll highlight how the music videogame is just the latest stage of how we have changed how we value music and justify purchasing it in the 21st century.

You see, whilst everyone was running about shouting about how music was devalued, or that no one was paying for it, a whole industry worth over a billion pounds came out of nowhere, where strangely enough people were paying £1.50 for a poor quality 30 second sample of a track to use as their ringtone! As you can see, that blows away the whole ‘people won’t pay for music’ argument. What did the industry learn from this experience? Answer: That people still love music and they will pay for it, even pay too much for it, as long as it’s relevant to another lifestyle experience.

Now I’m not suggesting that Ringtones led directly to Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero was a great game which inherited gameplay ideas from superb games such as Parappa the Rappa and the entire Dance Mat craze. However, I would suggest that it wasn’t until we saw the success of the ringtone that labels suddenly realised they needed to embed their product into someone else’s. It helped to establish the business model which Guitar Hero and Rock Band are thriving on.

It started off with a cheap plastic guitar accessory and now encompasses drums, guitars (possibly two), bass guitar and vocals. There are two main game franchises fighting for our attention in the guise of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Having gone through a brief period where each system lacked interoperability, I believe that hardware from one can now be used with the other. Thank goodness.

These games sell, and they don’t just sell once but in effect many times over, as just like with ringtones many of their owners will regularly download songs and albums to their systems. As reported by Gamesindustry.biz, Michael Sportouch (head of Activisions Guitar Hero business): “we’ve sold 35 million games and we have a very active fanbase”

Consumers will pay good money to buy music which can only be used in the game and cannot be copied to their Ipod or phone and taken on the move with them. They are closed systems, but no one seems to mind. Why? Because it’s within the context of the game. Somehow it ‘feels’ different. Consumers have fought for no DRM on MP3s for years, and have won that battle. But for your music videogame no one seems to bat an eyelid!

Before I get a barrage of emails telling me why, I do realise that it’s more than just the music you download. Its the graphics and visual notation needed to ‘play the track’, and as each game is very different these can’t become interoperable. I get that. However why not make it that when you download one, you get the MP3 at the same time? With no DRM.

Guitar Hero has now taken the experience one step closer by not only offering tracks to play along to, but the ability to write your own and share them with the online community!

Similar to how Apple took over music retail overnight, with no history in the marketplace, so too video game developers and publishers are taking over music ‘production’ at a very basic level, leaving Yamaha, Roland and Steinberg (all traditional providers of hardware and software solutions for the music production market) out in the cold. Certainly, there is an argument that as these products are basic they will encourage people to migrate to more professional systems. I would agree with this, based on the current state of play.

However, how long till we see a Guitar Hero Pro? I think that the gap between the low end of the home production market and home consumer/entertainment market will shrink and converge.

Activision believes that their music products can become a platform in their own right, working off flash enabled TVs which are now coming to the marketplace at attractive prices. This would leave the consoles out of the loop and just as we already have online karaoke companies on the Web it would seem the next stage for these more complex music games is to go native on the net but accessed through our TVs.One company which is yet to enter this space but which must be looking at it with great interest is Apple. The company is known for music MP3 players and the best supported download store, but people also forget that this is the company that has a huge investment in music production and experience in taking it to the masses, via their products Garage Band and Logic Studio.

I’ve been predicting/hoping for a while that their possible Tablet device’s killer app maybe a touch screen version of Garage Band which allows realtime loop based arrangements and possibly DJ Hero style interaction. The technology is already there, and people are experimenting with similar tech on the Iphone/Itouch. Certainly though, if Apple decides that it wants a way into the video game market beyond their apps on the Iphone/Itouch it could be music and the gaming side of it which they use as a killer USP.

Additionally, it will be very interesting to see what Natal could bring to this experience and Nintendo’s replacement for the Wii (due 2011?). Certainly if the console manufacturers want to avoid the current players taking their products direct to the TV or Apple coming in and shaking things up I think they will need to make their unique controllers have an impact on the depth of experience. Certainly Nintendo tried this with their Wii Music which, if nothing else, was an interesting experiment at making a music game which did not follow the Guitar Hero route which all others have so far adopted.

So where are we heading with this? Well, at present it is a terrific platform at selling music for the labels. Artists’ old albums and new are being given a new lease of life and a dedicated marketplace in which to flourish. Im sure this will underpin the experience for many years to come, whether it be in current game play experiences or future gaming platforms. People like to hear music they already know, even if they change and modify it. Additionally not everyone is musical enough to create their own tunes from scratch.

Yet, there is no avoiding it; music is becoming more and more about creation and sharing. Its almost as if we are going back to how music was experienced before the advent of recording and the large music industry.

Indeed, perhaps in 20 years no one will be able to ‘name that tune’ as there will be just far too many!

Art R. Furie; Words Steven G