Comments on: A developers diary on the canceled American Idol coin-op game

By: Seen at Hollywood Bowl, UK – Beatbox Recording Studio « Arcade Heroes

Seen at Hollywood Bowl, UK – Beatbox Recording Studio « Arcade Heroes — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:08:35 +0000

[...] singing, being put into a video and having that video sent via e-mail or burned to a DVD. That game was canceled but it appears that someone liked the idea enough to produce something similar to that – [...]

By: Game Retail Store » Raw Thrills’ Eliminated American Idol Arcade Game

Game Retail Store » Raw Thrills’ Eliminated American Idol Arcade Game — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:29:31 +0000

[...] [Via Arcade Heroes] [...]

By: Shaggy

Shaggy — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 20:53:58 +0000

I know that one thing that drove up costs on this was the licensing – in particular the fees that needed to be paid to Simon Cowell for the use of the AI stuff.

By: editor

editor — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:50:26 +0000

Interesting – but I still wonder, two tests do not make a project? The product was playing in the ‘Dancing Head’ sector – and they could have tested that pricing model? http://danceheads.com/

My gutt feel is that after checking the ROI, finding the hole in the licenses and impact of GH development, Betson forced the close.

By: Shaggy

Shaggy — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:18:42 +0000

One person told me that it was canceled because it was cost prohibitive to customers – you might have caught that pic on the blog where it lists the prices – $2 just to sing, $4 for a recording sent to you via e-mail and $6 to have a DVD of your performance burned. I also read a spot on there where this dev complains about that too.If you couple that with poor earnings at any location test then it just those aspects are my guess as to what doomed the project.

By: editor

editor — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 11:51:19 +0000

I have to say that this Blog leaves more to the imagination – O am always concerned by these kind of postings when no actual reasons are given- just hints.
I need to know:

- was the game cancelled because of the legal issues (i.e. they did not have the full permission to start with)?

- was it canceled because of over spending from the developers and poor business practice?

- was it as popular as claimed (rumors of ROI figure’s from the second test were claimed to be disappointing)?

All these need to be answered (with no ambiguities) for this to be a believable blog rather than a sulk on a closed project.