Good Thing Harmonix is a “Failed… Developer”
I used to collect comic books when I was growing up, and I had my favorites, all of them Marvel. One of the titles they had was a series called “What If,” which if memory serves (without consulting Wikipedia), the series was cancelled well before I found them. In this series, each issue would tell a different story that fans of Marvel would know well, but would change a major part of the story line. For example, “What if… Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four…” (OK, maybe I broke down and checked Wikipedia for this example… and apparently it was brought back several times).
Well, today the CEO of Activision, Bobby Kotick, spoke at the DICE Summit, and uttered a comment that would make an interesting “What If” story. He mentioned…
I regret not buying Harmonix…
My brain just exploded.
I’m sure many of you are familiar with the history of Guitar Hero, and what recently happened, but let me give you a quick primer in case you aren’t. Red Octane teamed up with Harmonix to develop the original Guitar Hero, as well as Guitar Hero 2. Red Octane was the peripheral (guitar controller) hardware maker, while Harmonix handled the development of the software. At this point, the franchise was successful enough to land on some important gaming executives’ radars, including one Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision. As the legend goes, when approached with a Guitar Hero 2 bundle still in the box, he grunted and ham-fistedly pointed at a logo on the box, and his underlings assumed he meant that he would like to purchase the company he pointed at, which unfortunately was Red Octane (not really true, but that’s besides the point). As Red Octane retained the copyright for the Guitar Hero franchise, Activision tapped Tony Hawk franchise developer Neversoft to pick up with development of the Guitar Hero franchise starting with Guitar Hero 3. While the Neversoft-developed sequel to Guitar Hero 2 took only a year to develop and publish, Harmonix was purchased by media conglomerate Viacom, and went on to create a new franchise in the same single-year time frame called Rock Band.
Neversoft continued with the Guitar Hero franchise, until just last week we found out from Activision that Guitar Hero 6, to be released around this April, will be their last, as development of the franchise will be handed off to developer Vicarious Visions. It is still unknown what will be the ultimate fate of Neversoft, but it doesn’t look good. As bad as it looks however, it is better than Red Octane, who is in the final stages of being completely digested by Activision, with the only survivors to be a handful of peripheral experts landing at Activision. After all the recent “shakeups” related to the hardware and software producers of the Guitar Hero franchise, it appears that Activision’s confidence in the franchise is not what it used to be.
Harmonix has continued with the Rock Band franchise, and despite falling short of profitability expectations in 2009, still has the commitment of their parent company, Viacom. After looking at the comments given by Mr. Kotick earlier today, I’m assuming a large number of people at Harmonix are glad they dodged that bullet. Maybe it’s because, as Mr. Kotick went on to explain…
We had always known them [Harmonix] as sort of somewhat a failed developer of music games. They always had really good ideas, but nothing that was really commercially viable until Guitar Hero and at first we thought, ‘okay, it’s a good piece of software, but if we gave it to Neversoft, they’re going to knock the ball out of the park with this.
Way to suck, Harmonix!
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Activision’s business sense is on an organ that’s firmly stuck up their collective asses. It’s too bad, because if they had a clue, we might have got a Guitar Hero franchise with the quality of Rock Band. However awful Guitar Hero has been since 3, it still readily outsells Rock Band in almost every instance. Plus, RB has nearly no presence in Europe, which is a bad move for EA and Harmonix.
Harmonix? Failed developer. Yeah, I guess I can kind of see that. After all, Harmonix didn’t expand upon the Guitar Hero idea in both technical gameplay (more instruments) but in song selection, too. And they didn’t release a game based solely on one of the greatest single rock acts of all time.
Oh wait! They did BOTH of those things! Surely there’s something they didn’t do as well as Activision. Let’s see – ooh, I’ve got one! Harmonix didn’t release FOUR Rock Band titles in three months, effectively glutting the market and nearly running the music game franchise into the ground.
Stay classy, Activision.
Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose.
The only reason Harmonix is doing well is because they were bought by Viacom. They have MTV and Viacom to back them up in order to get all the great music and develop the sweet controllers. If Activision had bought them I think they would have went the way of Red Octane. There would not have been a Beatles Rock Band if Activision had bought Harmonix, or at least not a GOOD Beatles Rock Band.
I loathe Activision in its current state — I’m old enough to remember playing their sweet games on an Atari 2600 — but I don’t see this comment from Kotick being flammable.
Harmonix was a mess until Guitar Hero. They obviously had some cool ideas about rhythm gaming, but things didn’t come together with a unified vision until GHI hit the streets in November 2005.
So, in that sense, Harmonix was a failed developer.
Actually, if Viacom hadn’t bought Harmonix there might very well have never been a Beatles game. If the stories are true, the conversation that got that game off the ground took place when a Viacom exec who was friendly with the Harrisons found out that Dhani loved Guitar Hero (this was before the first Neversoft version had been released). He told Harrison that his company just bought the developer, Harmonix. Harrison got interested, and the rest is history, or just good PR.