Redesigned RockBand.com features awesome swag
Harmonix is bringing gaming merchandise to whole other level with Rock Band 2 and the newly redesigned rockband.com, and its all being made possible by one of the coolest technologies I’ve seen in a long time: 3D printers.
You’re probably wondering what a 3D printer is. Right off the bat we should clarify that it is not a “printer” in the conventional sense, as it is not printing on a piece of paper; its name is misleading. It would be better called a “Physical 3D Model Constructor” or something to that effect.
For a detailed explanation, check out 3D Printing page at Wikipedia. The simpler explanation is that these 3D printers, once fed an electronic 3D model in a CAD file format, will actually construct that model using a fine powder, and what comes out is a faithful, full representation in every dimension of what you put in.
By way of example, if you give the printer a 3D polygonal model of a man, it will create an actual figurine made of layers of fine powder made solid through the application of other adhesive materials. As wikipedia puts it, “Layers of a fine powder (plaster, corn starch, or resins) are selectively bonded by ‘printing’ an adhesive from the inkjet printhead in the shape of each cross-section as determined by a CAD file.” It can even create models in full colour.
I’d heard of this very impressive technology before, but hadn’t ever seen it used in such a mainstream application as rockband.com is proposing now: you can construct 3D figurines of your own Rock Band 2 characters. (It’s worth pointing out that this is only functional with Rock Band 2 and not the original game.)
Whatever character you’ve created in Rock Band 2 you can request rockband.com to create. Whatever state your character was in the last time the game and Xbox 360 were connected to Xbox LIVE, is the figurine that will be created.
What you’ll end up with is something like this:
Awesome or Super Bad? Tough call.
Now mind you, there are certain limitations. You cannot, for instance, create the pose that your character will be frozen forever in time in. Instead, you will pick certain preset poses through rockband.com. Here’s hoping that the poses will become more varied over time.
Also, and this is a biggy, the asking price for one of the 6″ figurines is a whopping $69.
Regardless, this is about as unique and worthwhile a merchandising option for a game we’ve ever seen. Still, we’re curious to see just how good the quality really is. If we actually decide to bite the bullet and get our own figurine in the near future, we’ll post pictures and give you our impressions of the actual, physical, final product. But that’s a big “IF”.
For a short video explanation of this wicked merchandise, head over to the merch page at rockband.com and click on the “Make Bandmates” video.
peachey @ October 7, 2008