Guitar Hero Will Charge a Second Disc Import Fee for World Tour and Smash Hits
Disappointed that Guitar Hero World Tour only exported 35 out of 86 tracks? If additional songs are licensed and become available for disc importing in the future, you'll have to pay another re-licensing fee for those new songs, according to official Guitar Hero Support information.
The same goes for exporting Guitar Hero Smash Hits, which only offered 21 out of 48 on-disc tracks.
The official GuitarHero.com FAQ states:
Will the Disc Import offers available now be updated in the future? Will new songs be added?
No. If new songs become available an additional import will appear in the Import Offers list. There will be a nominal re-licensing fee for any additional offers.
The $3.50 or $2.00 Disc Import Fee for GHWT/GHSH Only Covers the First 35/21 Songs, You'll Pay Again for Future Song Exports
Initially, Guitar Hero 5 owners were mistakenly under the belief that the $3.50 disc import fee for Guitar Hero World Tour would be sufficient to grant them access to the rest of the songs, once they became available. After all, these are people who already own Guitar Hero World Tour, so paying fees to use something you already own seems a bit strange to begin with.
This confusion resulted from another official Guitar Hero statement:
Will I be charged for future games? Will I need to download again for each new Guitar Hero game that supports this feature?
No. This is a one time re-licensing fee. Once the songs are on your Hard Drive (or SD card) all future games that support this feature will automatically access them.
The phrase "one time re-licensing fee" is what prompted many to incorrectly conclude that the $3.50 disc import fee would cover any and all Guitar Hero World Tour tracks made available for exporting.
"One Time Re-licensing Fee" Means Your DLC Works in Future Guitar Hero Games At No Extra Charge
When the Metallica Death Magnetic album DLC came out for Guitar Hero 3 and Guitar Hero World Tour in September 2008, Xbox 360 and PS3 owners were able to buy the songs once and use them in both games. Then, when Guitar Hero Metallica came out, they were able to import these songs as the only DLC in the game. Now in Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero, Death Magnetic DLC continues to allow free reuse.
This is what the "One Time Re-licensing Fee" refers to specifically. In other words, for $3.50 you get only 35 out of 86 GHWT tracks, but once you have those 35 tracks, you are free to reuse them in GH5 and Band Hero for no additional fee.
None of This Matters Unless They Export Additional Songs
Guitar Hero 5 has been released for 2 months now, and while the initial GHWT/GHSH disc import worked as advertised and was a great step forward for the Guitar Hero series, the abbreviated track list only heightened the demand for additional disc exports. However, company representatives have been mum on the issue except for the following statement on the GuitarHero.com FAQ:
Will more disc songs be made available for Guitar Hero World Tour and Guitar Hero Smash Hits (Guitar Hero Greatest Hits in Europe) for import?
The technology allows us to release additional "volumes" of Song Imports for all titles. Activision is working with music companies and artists to secure as much disc-based music as possible for inclusion in this program – so stay tuned!
It's nice to hear intentions of "securing as much disc-based music as possible", but now that GH5 has been out for 2 months, the only updates we've seen are Band Hero import/exports.
Will we ever see popular songs exported, like:
- Slayer – "Raining Blood"
- Ozzy Osbourne – "Bark at the Moon", "Crazy Train", "Mr. Crowley"
- Avenged Sevenfold – "Beast and the Harlot"
- Pantera – "Cowboys From Hell"
- Metallica – "Trapped Under Ice"
- Bullet For My Valentine – "Scream Aim Fire"
- Paramore – "Misery Business"
- Dragonforce – "Through the Fire and Flames"
What do you think? Will Activision follow through with their promise to make additional disc import tracks available? Is it appropriate to charge again for each portion of the export?
What songs are you most anxious to import that haven't yet been made available?
I'm willing to pay almost anything for Take Me Out and Misery Business.
Highly-rated.
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ryan12_penske – wow, saving 1c there.
but tbh as much of a rockband whore i am i did buy gh5, and i would love more songs to add to the playlist, but i only want to have to pay the export fee once and get all the songs off the disc per game (meaning i'd pay per game to export the songs), and then i'd delete all the songs i don't want/like. i'd love a full band playing of TTFAF or freebird (oh wait, that's available off ghsh) and other songs i love playing on previous gh titles.
i'll stick to gh5 dlc for now until the export costs include all the songs on disc (or at least all the songs i want from that game). also, i wonder if they could do an export thing with gh2 and 3 titles?
There's a lot of songs players want to see export from GH2 and GH3.
Eric Johnson "Cliffs of Dover"
Disturbed "Stricken"
Queens of the Stone Age "3s & 7s"
Muse – "Knights of Cydonia"
An Endless Sporadic "Impulse"
Personally I want to see these and:
Pearl Jam "Even Flow"
Guns n' Roses "Welcome to the Jungle"
Dope "Nothing For Me Here"
The problem is, none of these songs have Drum and Vocal charts! So that makes it quite unlikely for them to export, unless something like "Guitar Hero Smash Hits 2" comes out..
I have no problem paying another fee as you are getting the songs at a 0.10c per song rate which is much better than RB's going rate. With Band Hero having 61/65 songs exportable this looks like good news for future exports
Yeah, I mean RB1's export fee of $5 for 55 songs was really overpriced. They could've went to $4.99.
Honestly, I have no urge to export Guitar Hero songs to my PS3, and I never will. It might be more convenient, but the game has lost a lot of its luster IMO. I'm glad I got GH:VH for free instead of paying $60 for it in december. I would've have been pissed if I had actually bought that crap.
I want Killer Queen, TTFAF, Smoke On The Water, Bark At The Moon, &….wait, it could take forever to list them all here. I just want as many GHWT & GHSH songs as legally possible.
Honestly, I don't mind an additional fee as long as the music is importable, reasonably priced, and done sooner rather than later. When, oh when, are we going to be able to expand our library? I want the rest of GT:WT and GT:SH (not to mention Aerosmith, Metallica and VH) to be importable. After all, popping in one disc to play music I have already bought is what it's all about.
At first glance, I wasn't even going to bother with Band Hero, but now that I know I can import 61/65 songs out of it, I just might try to find a used copy where the import code hasn't been used yet..
I agree, they need to kick it into high gear for the imports. As for the Band Hero import, you can just get a manual from Blockbuster (assuming the code is still valid, though nobody in my neighborhood knows about importing).
Here's an interesting quote from 8/8/09:
Source: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3175494
Hmmm….