Marketing geniuses

So.  Rock Band 3.

(Yeah, I know: It came out a long time ago.  No one ever accused me of being on the cutting edge.)

We had a great deal of fun with Rock Bands 1 and 2 on our Playstation 2.  No, you couldn't customize your avatars and download songs and all like you could on the newer consoles, but you could play the games.  Tommy played guitar and drums; I'm notoriously bad at anything involving hand-eye coordination, but through repeated practice managed to master the bass in "Wanted Dead or Alive."  And the kids, when they got old enough, both liked playing the drums (whether they were plugged in or not).

So when I heard they were coming out with a Rock Band 3, I was totally on board.  Guaranteed sale.  Only they didn't release it for the Playstation 2.  Well, fair enough; it was a pretty old console by that time.  We had a Wii; we'd just buy the Special Edition bundle for that.  Only the Special Edition bundle this time around only included the new keyboard controller and the game, instead of all the instruments like it always had before.  And you couldn't buy the old instruments anywhere -- well, unless you count on eBay, where people caught on to the fact that they were sitting on a gold mine and started charging more than retail for old, used equipment.

I couldn't believe it.  What was this company thinking?  "We'll release a game and only sell it to people who bought our last game.  Who needs new customers?"  Here I was, wanting to give these people money, and instead of taking it, they were making people on eBay rich. 

So we've been getting by with just Rock Bands 1 and 2, but last week, the Playstation stopped reading the Rock Band 2 disk.  That's the ones the kids liked playing because it has "no-fail" mode where it doesn't matter how many notes they miss, they still get to finish the song.  I gave in and ordered a PS3, Rock Bands 1, 2 & 3, the RB3 keyboard peripheral, and Lego Rock Band from Amazon.  Sadly, the whole shebang still cost less than our original PS2 when we bought it.