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Game Music Industry News on - Harmonix

Harmonix has lived the ultimate dream of any wannabe musician. They've gone from nobodies, to rockstars, to washing out as has beens in less then a decade. But don't be sad for them, they're probably exactly where they want to be.

Harmonix started out as a small independent studio that created and published their own games. Starting on consoles with Frequency and Amplitude which were both well received critically while not selling that particularly well they did leave an impression on the industry. The only people making music games before them was Japan. When Harmonix teamed up with Red Octane to make Guitar Hero shortly after those titles, they had no idea that they would give birth to a brand new market. The market of music games with large packs of plastic instruments. As you know, Guitar Hero became a smashing success and Red Octane was purchased by Activision before Guitar Hero 2, putting Harmonix in a new relationship with a large publisher. A relationship they weren't entirely comfortable with. After making and establishing the successful brand of Guitar Hero, Harmonix got purchased by MTV Games and essentially had to start from scratch, but this time around they knew how to make a successful music game, so they improved on the Guitar Hero the best they could and created Rock Band.

3 years, and a dozen of music games later. The market has essentially cannibalized itself by over saturating their market and leaving Harmonix unable to match the success they had had with Guitar Hero 1,2, and Rock Band. Viacom the most recent owners of Harmonix, has seen the rock stars of the music game industry, shine, burn, and die out of relevance, selling Harmonix back to Harmonix just last week.

Now that Harmonix is in charge of it's own fate I wonder if they will treat Rock Band 3 as the last and final iteration of their Rock Band platform or if they'll start working on a Rock Band 4. Let's hope they one day find ways to let us rock out with accordians.