Fender Play VS Rocksmith (comparison)

Both Rocksmith and Fender Play are targeted to beginner guitar players. However, the two programs take a dramatically different approach in terms of how they teach said beginner. 

While Fender Play relies on a more traditional, pre-recorded instructor and lesson model, Rocksmith was designed to be a mimic of Guitar Hero with an on-screen video game interface teaching you songs with less emphasis on lessons. However, there are enough similarities between the two systems to pit them against one another and compare them in a number of common criteria.

Before we get started, here are a few things to note about Fender Play and Rocksmith:

• Rocksmith is all about songs: Though Rocksmith does have some lessons and tutorial-style content, the bulk of their game is taking you through well-known songs written by popular artists, similar to Guitar Hero.
• Fender Play is a fairly new program: Having launched in 2017, Fender Play is still fairly new by online guitar lesson standards. 
• Rocksmith does not use any instructors: Like Yousician and Guitar Hero, Rocksmith presents its content entirely through their playalong interface and video-game system.
• Fender Play is a collection of both instructional material and song lessons: Fender intersperses their lesson content with song tutorials, but covers a lot of both.

Fender Play has a big advantage over Rocksmith in the free trial department, simply because you have to buy Rocksmith outright before you can even try it.

Fender Play will give you 30 days free, just for acting interested. 

Other differences include the multiple instrument format of Fender Play, which dilutes the depth of material for each instrument, but also gives you some more variety to work with. 

Skill Level, Depth and Challenge

Though both programs struggle to provide much value outside the early guitar stages and topics, we like Fender Play a little better for beginners. It has better structure and scores higher in the topical order segment with actual course arrangements, whereas Rocksmith doesn't provide full courses.

Both programs focus heavily on songs, and Rocksmith does make the process a lot more fun and engagement.

Yet both programs struggle to form any kind of consistency or chronological learning paths within their content.

Beginners can and should be learning songs, but we'd argue that both Rocksmith and Fender Play are over-committed to the song learning aspect of their content and don't provide enough foundational skill-building to help a beginner really tackle the cover song realm of their instrument.

Structure, Design and User Experience

The aesthetics and design of both platforms are quite good, though Rocksmith falls off a bit in regards to course navigation. In the game, it isn't always clear where you should go or what you should do next. While you can always pick out a song you want to learn in Rocksmith, there's no real guidance or clear learning path to follow, which makes it a little more difficult for the user.

Fender Play's navigation is far better, giving you a linear system within each course that is less confusing and easier to find your way around.

As a website, Fender Play also gets updated more regularly, while Rocksmith is a static game released in 2014, that will age as time goes on.

Supplemental Material

Rocksmith's video-game platform makes it difficult for them to add any kind of downloadable or supplemental content. While you can "download" new song lessons to the game, you can't pull any tabs or content down from the game itself.

You have tabs and notation on-screen, but that's about it.

On Fender Play's side, they often provide tabs and even chord diagrams when it makes sense to present content that way. They also do a little better with instructor interaction, again because they actually have instructors.

We should acknowledge that Rocksmith essentially has no supplemental content.

While I hate to say it this way, their biggest selling point is their song lessons which can't be downloaded, aside from being in the game itself. In that regard their entire platform hinges on the tabs that are already part of their game, without providing any additional content.

Licensed Song Lessons

Rocksmith comes with 50 songs already downloaded into the game, though there's a library of about 1400 songs available for download. While I'm not totally sure how often this is updated, they seem to be adding new content with some degree of regularity (a year ago they were around 900 songs). 

Fender Play's song section seems to get regular updates for guitar, though they're also publishing song lessons for bass.

It's difficult to tell exactly how many song lessons Fender Play has published at this point, but we'd guess the number is around 300, based on the rate at which they're updating the "newly added" section of that page.

The only area where Fender Play performs better than Rocksmith in the song category is where they avoid a second pay wall, something we see with a lot of guitar programs these days, Yousician being the prime example.

This means you pay for a membership, then need to upgrade to a second more expensive membership to get access to the licensed songs.

Fender Play hasn't done this, yet.

Rocksmith sort of does this in the form of downloadable content that you have to pay for. Last we checked, it was $2.99 per song.

If songs are your priority, we'd say Guitar Tricks is a better option than either Rocksmith or Fender Play.

Concluding our Fender Play VS Rocksmith Comparison

Both of these programs have a lot of weaknesses, and neither would be our top recommendation.

However, in a direct Fender Play VS Rocksmith comparison, the only area where Rocksmith is a truly better option is in the song lessons category. Even there, Fender Play has made a lot of progress over the past couple of years, and doesn't require additional money to access their songs.

If you're deciding between the two, we'd say give Fender Play your business, or at least a 30-day trial, before you buy a copy of Rocksmith that you can't try for free.

Questions

Do you have questions about Rocksmith or Fender Play?

If so, feel free to leave us a message in the comments section below. I can check in there directly and do my best to help out.

See you there.