Game concerts in the west

[tanithryudo]

So this is sorta a followup to my previous post

It started when Youtube pushed me an hour long concert performance of Skyrim OST. I also did a brief search on youtube and found a few other Game OST related concert performances which are...pretty much similar to this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaskxKfeFno

Watch on YouTube

Now, I do like some of the skyrim OSTs, and I have a couple versions of Dragonborn Comes on my playlist somewhere. But, em... well, let's not compare how much it costs to hire an orchestra vs hiring professional singers/idols...mostly because it seems to be a pure cultural thing that Western games prefer pure instrumental OSTs exclusively, while Eastern games will have a mix (instrumental versions of songs in game, and vocal versions for advertising and pure showing off). But still, style of music aside, I still gotta say the venue and post-production of the western performance is simply incomparable to the east.

Comments

[cashew]

In terms of video game concerts, I'm more partial to Uematsu's Voices, from Final Fantasy. Nice blend of East and West.

Also, uh, hiring a professional orchestra, depending on the qualification and performance level, can be mind boggling expensive. I really wouldn't say hiring a few idols, even with elaborate set pieces, is necessarily more expensive financially than hiring a full orchestra. Some of those instruments alone takes millions USD to insure. A top level orchestral concert ticket can exceed $1000 for a reason. Even the more reasonably priced concerts are still hundreds of USD. The avenue has to recuperate the cost somehow.

[tanithryudo]

I would expect it depends on the orchestra, just like hiring singers would depend on the actual singer. The high end for both would be different from the low end. Also, it's not like Chinese galas don't also have hired orchestras right alongside singers when needed, just not in the one from HoK specifically since that one was geared more toward 国风, and so they only hired traditional instrument players. So yeah, it would be too much bother to compare.