A computer game version of X Factor!?
Such an idea has only been a dream to the tone-deaf gaggle of screaming 14-year-old girls and shrieking gay men who want to be able to put themselves in the spotlight and emulate their talentless false idols.
The news comes just days after Rage Against the Machine played a free gig in Finsbury Park for tens of thousands of fans who helped propel their single Killing in the Name to number one in the UK charts for Christmas, a spot traditionally held by the winner of Simon Cowell?s X Factor.
The game will be available on the tween?s platform of choice, the Nintendo Wii, as well as the Xbox 360. However, no announcements have been officially made about a PS3 version yet, which seems odd, considering Simon Cowell?s record label, SyCo, is a division of Sony records. Perhaps it's because none of the winners sing their own songs.
The song choice will undoubtedly contain all of the current ‘big hits’ that were sung on the show itself, which makes the game?s replay value extremely limited as the current band of manufactured pop that infects the tween zeitgeist is completely disposable and will change within the space of a year. The result is a game that will last as long as any of the bargain basement tie-ins of TV shows such as?CSI or Lost.
X Factor: The Game is quite obviously a poorly-veiled attempt to make Simon Cowell even richer than he already is. It seemed quite apt that before Rage Against the Machine took the stage on Sunday a cartoon was played that lampooned Cowell for his love of money, himself and trousers with a ridiculously high waistband.
There also seems to be an inherent ideology of making money from someone else?s idea. Cowell does it by making his pop puppets sing covers until they fade into obscurity, have a nervous breakdown and die with a needle in their arm in a back alley in Soho. The X Factor game does this by taking Singstar?s idea and rebranding it, making only minute changes in the vain hope that it will be a success.
Don't expect much from this title, it's bound to be even more annoying than the TV show, as it will be people with even less talent than the average X Factor contestant taking part from the comfort of their council house’s living room.
I’m only left with two questions:
1. Will a digital Dannii Minogue be able to express more emotion than her vaguely human counterpart?
2. How long until Rock Band: Rage Against the Machine is announced?
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