Courtney Love went into a Twitter frenzy yesterday, threatening to sue Activision Blizzard over of its use of the image of her late husband and grunge music legend Kurt Cobain in the latest version of its popular music game, Guitar Hero.
Except, oops, Love signed the contract herself and also, sources said, the check has long been cashed from Activision.
Yesterday, BoomTown did a tour of the Mountain View, Calif., HQ of Guitar Hero, which is poised for a series of launches, including the fifth version of Guitar Hero and new music games Band Hero and DJ Hero.
While there, I interviewed CEO Dan Rosensweig, the well-known Silicon Valley exec who was once COO of Yahoo and who took over the high-profile division of Activision Blizzard in May in what was a bit of a surprise move into the music gaming industry.
Here’s a video of an interview I did with him about it all.
Despite the challenges the music gaming industry has been facing of late–such as sales dropping, yipes, almost 50 percent in the U.S. this year–the top companies in the field are still churning out new products like it’s nobody’s business.
Case in point is a spate of new products from the Guitar Hero division of Activision Blizzard, which is coming out this fall with three separate major launches, starting tomorrow with the GH5 and including the hip-hop flavored DJ Hero in late October.
Here’s BoomTown’s sneak peek from GH’s HQ in Silicon Valley.
BoomTown is certainly going to be one of the many-so-many who will immediately fork over whatever it takes to get my mitts on the upcoming tablet device from Apple.
And that’s why, according to a new report from Piper Jaffray Senior Research Analyst Gene Munster–who is monk-like in his devotion to writing down every scrap he can about whatever Apple HQ in Cupertino, Calif., deigns to release–it’s going to be raining money down on the company, just like manna from heaven.
While Microsoft COO Kevin Turner did a kind of modified cheerleading act at Microsoft’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting, Entertainment and Devices President Robbie Bach played the teenage boy and Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie the voice from the future.
It included Bach playing ball with Microsoft’s new motion-sensing, controllerless Project Natal and Mundie introducing a very creepy digital assistant with more than a passing resemblance to HAL from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
As reported Sunday night by BoomTown, former Yahoo exec and Quadrangle Group partner Dan Rosensweig will become CEO and president of the Guitar Hero division of gaming giant Activision Blizzard.
I chatted with both Rosensweig and Activision president and CEO Bobby Kotick yesterday about the move and where the gaming company is going in the year ahead.
“I love music and I love big brands,” said Rosensweig, whose enthusiasm for music, especially for Bruce Springsteen, is well known in the digital industry.
Former Yahoo COO and current Quadrangle Group partner Dan Rosensweig will take over as CEO and president of Activision Blizzard’s powerful Guitar Hero franchise, according to sources close to the situation.
Rosensweig will run the hot gaming company’s division, located in Silicon Valley, for Activision head Bobby Kotick.
The pair know each other well, since Kotick served on Yahoo’s board for many years when Rosensweig was a key exec there. He’s also just the kind of consumer Web exec that Kotick has been looking for to turbocharge the largely retail Guitar Hero business online.
Last night, Tapulous launched the second version of its hugely popular iPhone game app, Tap Tap Revenge.
With Tap Tap Revenge 2, the Silicon Valley start-up is hoping to keep up the momentum of its first success on the Apple service.
I visited the Tapulous offices in a former storefront in downtown Palo Alto, Calif., to interview co-founders Andrew Lacy and Bart Decrem to talk about the iPhone ecosystem and where it is all going.
BoomTown really does hope that in some secret airport hangar right now Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang are meeting, in order to hammer out a fair search deal that will benefit them both. I’d even insist that Yahoo’s noisiest board member, activist shareholder Carl Icahn, be there too, to make sure all sides were copacetic and there would be no last-minute switcheroos and backstabbings. Because, long ago in galaxy far, far away, what is now going on between Microsoft and Yahoo would have seemed inane.
BoomTown admits herewith that I am a teenage boy, given how much I really like Atom’s Kung-Fu Election site, an online fighting game for the general election.
In advance of tonight’s much-anticipated debate between the vice-presidential candidates–Democratic Sen. Joe Biden and Republican Gov. Sarah Palin–here’s a video of them duking it out digitally in hiiii-ya style.
Let’s hope the verbal sparring to come is as gripping.
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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