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Ack, no more Harmonix Guitar Hero games?January 17th, 2007 |
The headline says it all: GameDaily BIZ: Breaking: Guitar Hero Development Goes to Neversoft.
I suppose this might be a side effect of Harmonix getting acquired by MTV while Red Octane got bought by Activision. And Neversoft is a talented shop. But either way, it’s still dismaying…
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Yup. Although Harmonix was bought by MTV, the Guitar Hero trademark was obtained by Red Octane and therefore the name and game stay at Activision.
In related news, Activision has filed trademark applications for “Guitar Villain” and “Drum Villain”.
But expect more games like Guitar Hero. We got dance, drums, and guitars.
Hmm, I’m thinking a singing game or a producer/remixer game is next.
Frank
Singing, you mean like:
Karaoke Revolution Volume 2
Karaoke Revolution Country
Karaoke Revolution: American Idol
Karaoke Revolution Party Volume 4
or like Singstar? 
And would Beatmania do as a starting point for the producer/remixer genre?
Just because it won’t have the name on the box, doesn’t mean that Harmonix will not (is not) making Guitar Hero-ish III right now.
Will be an interesting test of how knowledgeable consumers are, to purchase GH III/Stars/Revolution/Country/Idol or the next Harmonix product.
The same happened with Championship Manager, the brand went one way and the developer another. The developers version is currently winning in sales, and it considered a better game.
It will be nice to compare the difference in effect on the markets for football management games and guitar games, although it does depend on how good each game is.
Freeing up Harmonix to work on different (new) projects is definitely a good thing IMHO. The game model for GH is done and done (fantastic, mind you, but not in need of any more big features)… handing it of to a shop with vast experience getting games into multiple platforms is the way to go.
I can’t wait to see what Harmonix comes up with next.
RE: all the singing games…
Oh shoot, how did I missed all of theses? Particularly the American Idol one.
I must have skipped over certain parts of Time-Space.
What’s next, a violin game? OR a co-op jam session game called… The All American Band! There are some people writing music analysis software which I can see bleeding into an AI program for judging music creation, e.g. sounds like Tina Turner, plays like Dylan.
Frank
This is actually the SECOND American Idol game. The first one came out during the first or second season. I remember being at E3, they had Paula Abdul there or something.
But this one just came out. Last week maybe? Or maybe it comes out shortly.
I didn’t even list all the Karaoke Revolution games… I missed the first one in the list, I see now.
And Singstar is a huge series in Europe — up to 6 volumes or something.
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once an innovative franchise in its own right, though after sixteen variations of the same gameplay, you have to wonder when they’re going to stop milking it. (Hat tip: veteran developer Raph Koster, who muses, “I suppose this might be a side effect of Harmonix getting acquired by MTV while [original Guitar Hero publisher] Red Octane got bought by Activision. And Neversoft is a talented shop. But either way, it’s still dismaying…
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