So Many Music Video Games

Is the rise in video games with creating music and playing instruments starting to make the industry inundated? With many new games coming out soon, there are numerous options to pick from now. Will the games continue to excite and enthuse an audience and which games will stick? Or will it start to die down because of a saturated video game music category?

The good part about this is it makes the video game companies have to produce great, unique products in order to get people to pick their game over the others. Therefore, there are hopefully going to be a lot of notable choices available.

I read in USA Today about a few of the upcoming games - like Guitar Hero World Tour which allows you to record and create music (Check out CNN's story for more info) and Wii Music (picture above) which allows four people to play up to 60 instruments (check out Kris Abel's Tech Life blog for more info).

I will probably be trying Wii Music since I already have a Wii but it sounds like Guitar Hero World Tour already has a lot of hype around it. Hopefully it will live up to its expectation.

Paid Apps Available for Android

Corvida at ReadWriteWeb wrote about a web site online that is good news for application developers. Currently, on the Android Marketplace, applications will all be available for free. Now with Handango, developers will have the option of charging people for uploading their application for T-Mobile and Google's G1. They have more than one option on how they want to sell it too.

G1 customers can download the application on the web and then transfer it to their cell phone. Handango already has a selection of applications including The Weather Channel and FitSync.

The problem for Handango is eventually Google is planning on allowing developers start selling their applications, so I don't know how long Handango will be needed...

Google Phone Released in Six Days

T-Mobile's G1 is a touchscreen cell phone with Google's operating system, Android. It includes a few capabilities the iPhone does not have but with poor hardware. It also only works best on T-Mobile's fastest data plan which is currently in limited locations. Lets take a look at all it's good and bad elements.

Good:

• Price: $299 with a two-year contract; data plans at $25 or $35 a month
• Removable battery
• Multimedia picture messaging w/ better photo quality than iPhone
• Slideout physical keyboard
• Android: Flexible interface and openness for application developers
• Can be used abroad

Bad:

• Not so glamorous hardware: bigger than iPhone with smaller screen
• Slow internet
• No Outlook synchronization or Microsoft Exchange
• No support for Windows Media Player or iTunes for your music
• Irregular coverage

Good and Bad:

• Removable memory for music, videos and pictures but apparently it's hard to remove.

Cool Features:

• Google Maps shows a 360-view with a street-level photograph of where you are
• The Market: Android's version of the iPhone App Store
• Amazon MP3 Store

If the G1 doesn't seem to fit your style, don't worry cause apparently there are many more Google phones to come. Google CEO Eric Schmidt even stated that he foresees thousands of Android devices in the future.

Find more information in today's USA Today article.

So, how do you feel about the G1? Is it a good start for Google phones? What else would you want on your phone that you think this one is lacking?