The gaming community has seen quite a bit of music related games these past few years, enough to make even the popular Guitar Hero finally shut down. Harmonix, on the other hand, has different plans for Rock Band, stating that the franchise will see a ‘radical departure’ away from what gamers usually associate with peripheral-based gameplay.
“Looking into next year, we're actually considering fairly fundamental creative reinterpretation of what the Rock Band business is,” said co-founder and CEO Alex Rigopulos to Giantbomb in a rather intense interview.
"We're committed to the franchise, but when I think that when we do things with it in the future, it's going to be a pretty dramatic departure from what we've done before."
"You might assume we're going to add saxophone or something along those lines," added co-founder and CTO Eran Ergozy. "But no, the kind of direction we're planning on taking Rock Band, the kind of innovation we have in mind, is taking it in a different direction, one that's more suitable to the kind of environment we're in, what people are doing now, what they're interested in playing now, versus, say, 2007."
Harmonix might be at odds with Viacom, their former owner, but the studio cannot help but remind gamers that Viacom made a huge impact on the popularity of Rock Band during its heyday.
"I feel like the conventional storyline was, like, 'We got bought by Viacom and it was hard, and now we're indie and that's cool,' and there is some truth to that,” said Harmonix’s senior VP of product development Greg LoPiccolo.
"It's also true that the whole Rock Band franchise, which was this huge ambition we had, we never could have done without Viacom. There was no way we could have ever accomplished that without MTV and Viacom. It wouldn't have happened. Rock Band wouldn't have happened without their involvement."
Viacom and Harmonix are currently in a legal dispute over $131 million in performance bonuses that were apparently mistakenly awarded to Harmonix shareholders.
Harmonix is currently owned by a private investment group after being sold last November due to Viacom’s wishes to permanently leave the gaming industry.
