Harmonix

Guitar Hero, Rock Band, SingStar - which game do you support?

SingStar's success in Europe as well with the initial launch of 200 available songs in the US PS3 release kind of scares me.

I mean, yes, I'm excited that the music game genre is now mainstream, and that there are many viable options. However, Harmonix, is the company that made it happen. They are the ones with the creativity. They are the ones that create music games because they want people to have fun. They want the non-musician to experience music. They want you to have fun. Making money is only secondary to them. They made music rhythm games before guitar hero, before the sudden popularity of the genre. They are the ones that took the risk. They are the ones that found the format that 'click's with the anti-gamer. So the next time you have the option to support Harmonix vs RedOctane vs a random internal Sony studio, Choose Harmonix.

Ok, well some of you might be confused.

Before Guitar Hero was made, Harmonix, had 2 'niche' music rhythm games, Frequency and Amplitude. RedOctane on the other hand, became a specialist in hardware. During the DDR craze, if it wasn't for RedOctane, there wouldn't be any dancepads with a lifepsan greater than 2 weeks. I do respect RedOctane very much for the role they played in making DDR popular and accessible to the US.

So, with Harmonix now having experience making music games, and redoctane acquiring a specialty in making hardware specifically for music games, it only made sense for them to join forces and make guitar hero - which they did. And then they made guitar hero 2.

But then, they split. Harmonix wanted to continue their dream of giving the 'ultimate' music experience, while redoctane, seeing real money for the first time, didn't want to abandon the guitar hero label. So, they split. RedOctane was acquired by Activision, and unfortunately, Activision didn't have the same mentality as Harmonix. They don't care for the players, they just care about the money. They don't want companies like Harmonix to succeed. They specifically made sure their PS3 controllers wouldn't work with Rock Band. (The only reason they didn't do this for the xbox was because it was infeasible without making gh2 controllers not work too.) If you can only afford one game between guitar hero 3 (or any other future guitar hero, also note that future guitar heros are very likely to copy and include drums and singing too) versus rock band, get rock band. Support the company with the vision. Not the one (well the one who's publisher) is only caring about the end profit.

Oh yeah, Before SingStar was Karaoke Revolution. Guess who made karaoke revolution, yeah, Harmonix did. Support the company that wants to bring a music experience to everyone, not the one who has the most lobbying power among the music labels to license their songs.