The lack of updates from Genius Products / Scratch: The Ultimate DJ is concerning.
200 Shares of GNPR were short trades on Monday and another 200 on Tuesday. It seems most of the recent activity has been short trades in 200 share blocks. I am dismayed by the fact that Scratch was not at the 2010 E3 game conference.
Also, there are reports of Genius Products not returning emails:
"I tried to contact Genius Products, but I got a bounce-back saying I would receive a delayed response..."
I doubt there will be anyone that remembers this game, but I had heard about it through the grapevine last year during E3 2009 (Skip past the last link for the short-and-sweet version of the thread):
While a more complete game in DJ Hero was on display and being demoed for the X-Play cameras, there was another DJ game on the horizon that had been in development about a year earlier. That game was Scratch: The Ultimate DJ.
"What's the difference?" Well, while the basic functionality of each game was the same, the true difference was in the content and in the execution.
As far as the content was concerned, DJ Hero provided players with previously recorded mash-ups of two different tracks across different genres mixed by actual DJ's to basically mimic the pre-recordings in order to play, and advance through, the game. On the other hand, Scratch provided the player with a single track from the hip-hop genre to, again, play, and advance through, the game. Although having Daft Punk and Queen in DJ Hero was intriguing, I love hip-hop more, so I was ecstatic to hear that there was going to be a DJ game that was meant for me to play. No more hip-hop karaoke games, this was going to be the game for me and everyone around me to enjoy. Not only did I practically fall in love with Scratch's tracklist, I was more impressed by Scratch's peripheral than DJ Hero's peripheral.
Here's a look at the peripheral Genius Products and Numark with Akai were bringing to the table:
As most of us already know, the design and functionality of the DJ Hero turntable peripheral simply allows for playback of the mash-ups within the game... with buttons on the on top of the deck... yeah. The only real sense of expression comes when you can select to play 1 of 5 preset sound effects correlating to the genre and playing around with the flanger. With DJ Hero, it's basically a "DO AS WE INSTRUCT YOU TO DO, AND NO MORE!!!" type of execution.
If you've seen the Numark/Akai drum pad peripheral for Scratch in action, you know what to expect. If you haven't seen it, well, it's basically a miniature Numark deck with a spring-loaded (resets to the middle) crossfader on one side with a 5-button Akai drum pad on the other side, which allowed for right-handed or left-handed play. The gameplay is practically a "No Fail Mode" type of execution, but with the option to freestyle in extra beats and scratches into the song as long as you kept in rhythm with the song itself... How can that not feel like a better DJ gaming experience compared to that of the locked-in style DJ Hero offers???
And with that, the development of Scratch: The Ultimate DJ for Xbox 360 and PS3 has come to a stand-still... but, after some recent poking and prodding of the interenet, I have come across this bit of potentially good news:
So now, all we have to look forward to is an even smaller market segment with the iPad for a hip-hop game with possibly better functionality and execution for the iPad than on the iPhone and iPod Touch... Although, I am intrigued with the PC side of things and the redesigned peripheral for further console development.
If you've made it this far and have actually read through this post, I thank you for your time. If not, here it is in a nutshell:
Genius, Numark, and 7 Studios had a good thing going with Scratch: The Ultimate DJ, but rising costs, missed deadlines, and conservative leadership at Genius basically led to Activision coming in to "save the day," which ultimately led to pushing out DJ Hero and elimination of great competition from what I believe to be the better DJ gaming experience in Scratch. The "good news" is that Scratch is still in development, but must re-introduce itself mainly through Apple, then PC, and hopefully, back through the console market once again...
What's the sad thing??? Not just the fact that the last two links are the latest news on any Scratch development I could find, but that I have to be the one to "report" on it. Don't get me wrong, I had fun playing "detective," but this is the sort of thing I look for from sites like G4 and IGN when talks of DJ Hero 2 arose earlier and will arise later upon nearing the release date. There's probably more information that the people from the necessary outlets could provide, but I forget... If it's insignificant, it probably won't get coverage at all.
Forgive me for ranting in the end, but this has been a game I've needed some info on for a long time, of which, only Joystiq has been able to provide... not G4, not IGN, not even the game's own website. Just one gaming site and an iPod blog providing one article each which are 2 months removed from the date of this post.
Regardless, Scratch is still on the horizon, but I'm ready for it now.
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