Future of Harmonix and the Rock Band IP in question

Its been a rough time for Harmonix this month with their latest Rock Band title only selling a heart shatteringly pitiful 17,000 units in the UK despite obtaining an incredible Metacritic score of 93/100. And now it looks like publisher Viacom has decided to put the legendary development team up for sale to the highest bidder. Although its not clear if this sale would also include the IP rights to the Rock Band franchise, there’s a good chance it will.

And you know what else has a good chance of happening? That the ones to purchase both the development team and their IP rights will be World of Warcraft powered publisher behemoth Activision-Blizzard, who also own Rock Band’s only real competitor Guitar Hero. The real irony of this situation is Harmoix hasn’t always worked under Viacom, back when they were just a guttersnipe developer working for RedOctane they struggled to find any sense of commercial success. That was until 2005 when they finally released their first runaway hit making them a household name in the business. The name of that game? Guitar Hero. RedOctane was eventually bought out by Activision who inherited the Guitar Hero IP but not Harmonix itself.

So what does this mean to the average punter? Well if such a deal does go ahead don’t be too surprised if in a year or two you see Rock Hero (or Guitar Band/Rock Guitar/Band Rock/uh……Band Band?) filling up the shelves at your local game store. There’s also the question of competition, if Activision-Blizzard do indeed gain a monopoly on peripheral powered music games it’s fair to say they’re going be a lot less inclined to make quality assurance a priority if there’s no rival to compete with.