Alex 'Big Boy' Verrey is a bit of a character. Kick-starting his career as a character on the video game-centric Sky One show, Games World (and later, spin-off Barry's Joypad), 'Big Boy Barry' as he was known back then soon became one of its most popular figures, with his games reviews, chats and other features. Nowadays though he's the global PR Director for Mad Catz, a company that makes peripherals for various games - and more recently, is acting as co-publisher for the upcoming Rock Band 4 game. At a recent Rock Band 4 event in the basement of The Social music club in London, we sat down for a chat about all things Rock Band.
How much have you guys been involved in the development side of Rock Band 4? Is it that you guys are in charge of the instruments, or does it go beyond that?
We're the instrument side of things - well, it's a little bit further than that, actually. With Rock Band 2 we made the hardware for Rock Band 2, and other people did as well, but with Rock Band 3 we took that relationship further and were the official peripheral partners for Harmonix. So, we took over production of not only the Rock Band 3 hardware, but also all of the legacy hardware as well. And now we've taken that one step further, you know. We never stopped talking to Harmonix; we never stopped working with those guys; and we've been involved with them on this project for at least a year now, where we've been looking at Rock Band 4 in earnest. Now this time round we're co-publishing the game, so we're in charge of distributing the game, doing sales and marketing globally, as well as manufacturing all of the hardware.
One of the things we were interested in is when it comes to stress testing the instruments, and making sure they can get through the play sessions they have to go through. What goes into that? How much do you think an instrument has to be able to take to pass the test?
It's interesting because I think - and Dan [from Harmonix, also at the event] can speak for this as well - when they were working on the Rock Band 1 drums, and they were over in China stress testing these products, I think a lot of the manufacturers over in China were going all "HOW hard do you wanna hit these damn things?! You're crazy!". And, you know, we've got to show them that these things can take an amazing beating, and an amazing bruising. I think Microsoft had their own stress tests for regular controllers, but not for products like guitar controllers and drum controllers before they existed. But yeah - the truth is that these things undergo some amazing pressure! I mean, we've all been playing with buddies before where they get really overexcited, and they're really going for it with the products, or they're smashing them around, so we make sure we put these things through an amazing level of tests and pace, both internally at Mad Catz and Harmonix and amongst key testers that we have to make sure that they can really withstand a heck of a beating.
For this time round, we thought we'd kind of nailed it with Rock Band 3, but for Rock Band 4 we've taken things one step further. So, all of the music game controllers have been significantly improved from last time; they've all got some very key improvements that we think gamers are going to appreciate and notice immediately. Yes, in terms of rigidity, the guitar controller has had a new layer of reinforcement put on the inside of it - a new ribbing on the inside now. Before, with the Rock Band 3 controllers, you could kind of twist the neck, you could kind of pop the guitar if you pushed really hard on the base of it - you can't do that now, because it's been so heavily reinforced. On the drum kit we've got brand new, we've got an almost like... erm... trying to think of the word... stress-proof... it'll come to me in a second. Basically, all the drum pads have been reinforced.
What about the bass pedal? That was a big problem back in the day!
That bass pedal - well, the original Rock Band drum kit was notorious because that bass pedal was plastic. Since then it's been metal reinforced. The original Rock Band 1 drums - which I should go on record as saying Mad Catz had nothing to do with, they were not ours - the original Rock Band 1 drums were notorious, and there's all sorts of tricks you can still find on the internet, like putting a pile of coins or quarters under the Rock Band drum pads because they used to stick, and the drum pedal used to break REALLY easily. But we think that, with every iteration, the drum experience has got better, and by the time they came to Rock Band Beatles, the drums were pretty damn good. Rock Band 3 kind of improved it a little bit more, and Rock Band 4 has taken that yet one step further. We've got some really cool improvements on the Rock Band 4 drums that we think you're going to love!
One of the big things we wanted to know was with the compatibility of the hardware. We know you've said we can take it over from Playstation 3 to Playstation 4, and from Xbox 360 to Xbox One, but... my problem is that I've gone from the Xbox 360 primarily, and now I'm a Playstation 4 man. So to take my stuff across, am I going to need a whole new set of instruments?
Well, you know, inevitably we can't make everybody happy. But I think, and hopefully your readers agree with us here, that this has never been done before. Nobody even, in the history of gaming I think, has ever gone to as much effort trying to make sure that we offer as much backwards compatibility across generational formats, as we've done here with Rock Band.
Especially with downloadable songs and stuff too!
Yes - it's just crazy! It is crazy! I mean, the ultimate dream, as you said, would be allowing Xbox 360 owners to use their hardware on Playstation 4, and vice versa, from Playstation 3 to Xbox One. There are some things that I can't go into, but unfortunately, it's just not possible. That's out of Mad Catz' hands, and that's out of Harmonix's hands.
Is that going to be the same with the downloaded songs as well? That you won't be able to transfer them across from one to the other?
Unfortunately so, unfortunately so. That's what it's looking like at the moment, yeah. We absolutely tried everything, but there are some things that are out of our hands and they're in the hands of the first parties [console makers Sony and Microsoft]. And some things simply cannot be done. It's too much of a technical challenge and I think it breaches too many copyrights and blah-de-blah that you simply can't do that. The monumental challenge in getting Xbox 360 hardware to run on the Xbox One was bad enough - just believe that it's harder than anything.
Can you tell us about that at all?
Well, for starters, it's a totally different architecture. The way they communicate with the console is entirely different, so we've had to create from fresh - and there was no assistance in doing this, because it's never been done before - we had to create an adaptor that plugs in via USB to the front of your Xbox One, that basically allows your Xbox 360 hardware to communicate directly with the adaptor, and then the adaptor feeds directly into the Xbox One.
So it 'translates' it, as it were?
It translates the language, yes. Because it's a new, entirely different language. Playstation 3 to Playstation 4 is easier, because the Playstation 3, interestingly enough, always uses a dongle with the hardware. So the hardware was talking to the dongle, and then the dongle was talking directly to the console. So now, amazingly, we can now get rid of that dongle, and you can use your Playstation 3 hardware on it's own, as it can talk directly to the console, because it's doing it via Bluetooth.
I've never used the Rock Band stuff on the Playstation 3, but I know with Guitar Hero, the dongle ended up introducing a bit of lag. I guess going direct may well eliminate that?
Absolutely. It makes a big bit of difference. It makes a lot of difference, yeah. But you know, that legacy adaptor for the Xbox is seriously interesting bit of kit because it's never been done before, so it was an incredible engineering challenge, and I think it does go to show just how crazy, and the insane lengths that Harmonix will go to to support their audience.
Of course, when it comes to Mad Catz, your main interest will be in people buying brand new instrument controllers. I should note, I have no problem in buying another guitar if there's something cool about it! In America, you had a limited edition design you guys had put together for the PAX expo - is there a chance you might be doing different designs of guitars in future? Like a nice sunburst guitar or something? Or perhaps a pink one?
That's music to Mad Catz ears! That's interesting too, because we have the Penny Arcade special edition that was only for PAX, and, while we have nothing to announce at the moment, that is certainly something we'll be considering in the future, absolutely. You know, I really think, just to be short and sweet, what we try to do at Mad Catz is make sure that at day one the barrier to entry is very low. If you just want to spend £50 on the game, you can do that - buy the game, and then you can use whatever hardware you can find. You can use Guitar Hero controllers, you can use Rock Band controllers, you're even going to be able, we hope, to use the new Guitar Hero Live controller. We're trying to do whatever we can to make sure that there is no barrier of entry for you guys to get rocking out on day one. If you've got old products, if you've got old controllers, that's fantastic. However, if you haven't got old controllers, or you're in a mind to upgrade, of course Mad Catz want to make it as appealing to you guys as possible. So with that in mind, we've done everything we absolutely can to make sure that the brand new range of hardware is as exciting as possible and the best darn music game controllers the world has ever seen. And we think we've cracked it! We think that anyone who's ever played with a Rock Band controller before, when they pick up the new controllers on Rock Band 4, they're going to notice immediately the improvements and they're going to want to stick with them.
The other thing we had a question about, which is also kind of on the peripheral side of things, was for Rock Band 3 - I think it was Rock Band 3 - you had a store, which I think was only available in America, where you could make little figures of your characters and things. Is there any chance anything like this might end up coming back for Rock Band 4?
Yes - that was Harmonix though. I would say there's every chance, but we have nothing to report at the moment, I'm afraid. I think we are conscious of the fact that the genre has been away for a few years and that it's now coming back, so what I think you didn't want to do was overload the gamers. Because then people will just walk away. Day one we didn't want to have a hundred products, we didn't want to have a hundred accessories, we didn't want to have too much stuff to overwhelm retail and overwhelm gamers as well. So let's get the game out, get the game launched later this year, in 2015, and then the rest will be dictated by what the community tell us they want to see.
So there is a chance then?
There is every chance, but the community have got to want it!
If it helps, I'd have bought the t-shirts, and the figures and everything!
[laughs] They were awesome, yeah! I missed out on that too!
I was so upset we couldn't get them in the UK.
Well, if it happens again, maybe Mad Catz can help bring it back to the UK.
I guess a lot of it will depend on sales too
Absolutely. Let's see how the market reacts, let's not overload people, and let's see what happens!
In fact, speaking of sales, that was one of the things I thought was a bit strange in the opening presentation. Dan [from Harmonix] was saying how Rock Band hadn't done that well in Europe? That surprised me a bit!
Well, that is true - generally speaking, it didn't. And I think part of that isn't that Rock Band didn't do well, but more to do with that Guitar Hero did so phenomenally well. It really got itself stuck into Europe! And I think - I won't say anything too derogatory, but I don't think Rock Band was supported very well across Europe, which is something that, now Mad Catz are on-board as co-publisher, we intend to change. What's interesting this time round is that you have Guitar Hero launching at the same time as Rock Band, so, as far as we're concerned, we see a franchise reset button taking place. And I think it offers an equal opportunity for both franchises to shine.
Speaking of which - have you guys been checking your offices for bugs or leaks at all? It all seems like a bit of a crazy coincidence that Rock Band and Guitar Hero choose to come back at the same time, if you ask me...
You know what? It truly is! I've asked a lot of people about that, but the truth is it really has happened like that. We're not dictated by what Activision were doing or not doing, but it was just a simple coincidence as far as we're concerned that their game was announced at the same time. So - bring it on!
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Rock Band 4 is drumming, strumming and singing it's way onto the Playstation 4 and Xbox One later this year, in the autumn.
