Rock Band
Rock Band is a series of rhythm games first released in 2007 and developed by Harmonix. Based on their previous development work from the Guitar Hero series, the main Rock Band games have players use game controllers modeled after musical instruments and microphones to perform the lead guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, drums and vocal parts of numerous licensed songs across a wide range of genres though mostly focusing on rock music by matching scrolling musical notes patterns shown on screen. Certain games support the use of "Pro" instruments that require special controllers that more closely mimic the playing of real instruments, providing a higher challenge to players. Players score points for hitting notes successfully, but may fail a song if they miss too many notes. The series has featured numerous game modes, and supports both local and online multiplayer modes where up to four players in most modes can perform together.
Harmonix had worked with Red Octane for the Guitar Hero series first released in 2005; when Red Octane was acquired by Activision to continue Guitar Hero in 2007, MTV Games, a division of Viacom at the time, acquired Harmonix to expand the concept to Rock Band, and served as the game's publisher and manufacturer for the instrument controllers, with distribution handled by Electronic Arts. In 2009, due to saturation of the rhythm game market, sales of both Guitar Hero and Rock Band dropped; Harmonix's investors were able to buy the company from Viacom and making Harmonix an independent company, giving them more flexibility in options for the series. Harmonix transitioned to Mad Catz in 2011 for the publication and instrumentation controller manufacture. By 2013, Harmonix stopped producing downloadable content for the current Rock Band 3, though stated that it would consider its options for the series upon the arrival of the next-generation of consoles. Following the release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Harmonix released Rock Band 4 in 2015 for the new consoles. While Mad Catz initially manufactured the new instrument controllers. the game was not as financially successful, a partial cause for Mad Catz to declare bankruptcy and requiring Harmonix to switch production to Performance Designed Products for ongoing instrument controller manufacture.
To date, there have been four main games in the series, two band-specific spin-offs, and several additional spin-off titles and Track Packs. Harmonix has continued to support Rock Band through a persistent DLC model through January 2024, with routine releases of new songs on a weekly basis as well as the ability for players to import songs from previous games into newer ones, and as of January 2024, the latest title Rock Band 4 supports over 3000 songs from this approach. Harmonix had also offered the Rock Band Network to allow bands and labels to publish their songs as Rock Band tracks that can be purchased by players, though the service has since been discontinued; at the height of this service, over 4,000 tracks from 1,200 artists were available for Rock Band players.
By 2009, over 13 million copies of Rock Band titles have been sold, netting more than $1 billion in total sales. Over 130 million downloadable song purchases have been made by 2009.
History
Transition from ''Guitar Hero'' (2005–2008)
Prior to Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Harmonix had already established itself as a company that made game products that focused on music interactivity. Born out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, the first product made by Harmonix was The Axe: Titans of Classic Rock for MS-DOS, challenging the player to use four keys on the keyboard to match notes in several songs. Looking to find a place for this type of game, Harmonix' founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy looked to Japan where music games like PaRappa the Rapper were becoming popular. This led to the creation of Frequency and its sequel Amplitude for the PlayStation 2; both games featured the concept of matching notes for specific instrument tracks along lanes. However, in retrospect, Harmonix found that players had difficulty initially understanding the game, as the presentation was an abstract concept that did not immediately connect the gameplay to the music. The idea of making an easy connection between the game and the music was used as a basis for their Karaoke Revolution games, which including using avatars singing and dancing in time to the music to strengthen the connection; this series was financially successful and helped grow the company.Harmonix was approached by RedOctane to help develop the software for the first Guitar Hero game, itself based on Japanese games like Guitar Freaks. Harmonix used their previous experience in note-matching techniques from Frequency and Amplitude, as well as the lessons learned in developed Karaoke Revolution to create the Guitar Hero software. Harmonix was less concerned on developing gameplay, and instead more on connecting the player to the music, working to track the notes of the songs appropriately on the five-button controller as to make the player feel like they are playing the real instrument. Guitar Hero would go on to be a major success and found the basis of the Guitar Hero series.
As the success of the Guitar Hero series grew, Harmonix and RedOctane were purchased by MTV Games and Activision, respectively, in 2006; MTV paid $175 million to acquire Harmonix. RedOctane continued to publish the Guitar Hero series, bringing Neversoft on board for development duties. Harmonix was contractually committed to completing one final title, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, during and after the purchase negotiations.
With MTV Games, a subsidiary of Viacom, Harmonix took their experience from developing Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution to create the Rock Band series. According to Harmonix Vice President of Product Development, Greg LoPiccolo, the Harmonix team had already envisioned the possibility of different instruments before they were finished with the Guitar Hero series; Rigopulos noted that the Guitar Hero work was only a partial approach to this, limited to what they could do on a "shoe-string budget". Harmonix also embraced the idea of Rock Band as a platform rather than a software title, and took steps to incorporate downloadable content to extend players' music libraries without having them need to buy a new software disk. Rock Band was considered a success, leading to the development of sequels and spinoff titles. Viacom, under the terms of the acquisition, paid out $150 million in performance-based bonuses to Harmonix in early 2008 for their 2007 results, and were planning on a similar amount by the end of 2008. The Rock Band series scored what was considered a major coup by journalists when it successfully negotiated the rights to use the music of the Beatles in a video game, long considered a "holy grail" for music games.
Rhythm game saturation and decline (2009–2014)
By 2009, the market for rhythm games in general started to fall. The market had become saturated with titles, mostly from Activision's expansion of the Guitar Hero series, and consumers affected by the late-2000s recession were less likely to buy costly instrument controllers. Viacom had already reported significant losses on the Rock Band series, and sales of The Beatles: Rock Band did not meet their expectation. Viacom sought a refund on the $150 million already paid for the 2007 bonuses following its reassessment of the series' 2009 performance. Harmonix, anticipating the slowness of the market, developed Rock Band 3 with the introduction of several new features, most notably including the capability to connect real MIDI keyboards, MIDI guitars, and MIDI electronic drum kits, to create a "disruptive" game in the ailing rhythm game market by expanding to include real instruments.Though Viacom continued to support the series throughout 2010, it announced that it was seeking a buyer for Harmonix, citing the series' continued profit losses and Viacom's inexperience at being a video game publisher. Harmonix was eventually sold at the end of 2010 to Harmonix-SBE Holdings LLC, an affiliate of investment firm Columbus Nova, LLC that included Harmonix shareholders. Though the net liability of the sale was valued at nearly $200 million, including existing unsold inventory and ongoing music license fees, analysts believe that Harmonix-SBE paid only $50 for the company, taking on the total financial liability that Viacom was able to write off in their books. The MTV Games division at Viacom was later closed.
As a shareholder-held company, Harmonix retained the rights to the Rock Band and Dance Central franchises, and continued to support and develop the games. The company still faced some fallout from the sale, laying off about 15% of its staff in February 2011. In the same month, Activision announced that it abandoned ongoing development of planned Guitar Hero titles, which many journalists considered to signal the end of peripheral-based rhythm games. Though Harmonix considered the closure of Guitar Hero as "discouraging", they affirmed that they would continue to develop Rock Band and Dance Central and support their downloadable content for the immediate future. Other journalists believed that without competition, Harmonix no longer needed to develop under the same pressure, allowing them to polish and innovate for future titles in the series, bringing a likely future resurgence of the market.
In March 2012, Harmonix affirmed that it had no plans for a fourth major release title within the year, but was still strongly supporting the game through downloadable content through the year. By early 2013, the company stated that while they may come back to Rock Band at a future time, they were shifting resources to develop new titles, and later announced that it would discontinue its regular downloadable content for the series after providing over 275 continuous weeks of such content.