Harmonix for Sale

**Wooffus** · Joined: 11 Dec 2009 Posts: 837 Location: England

Well, there's a big difference between the two franchises from the start.

Neversoft had released a load of entries for the GH series, and seeing that the gains could be nowhere near as high as GH3 from this point on, Activision decided to stop Neversoft handling GH back in February. I'm assuming the deals were sealed after completion of GH:WoR back in April, which was shown with their last DLC ever released being the Black Sabbath track pack and all others since handled by Beenox.

In comparison, Harmonix were throwing in all the resources they could grab just to make Rock Band 3 a game made to excel. And all throughout the months leading up to its release, they were all snobby and feeling as if it would sell in its bucketloads. However, let's face it - it didn't sell, and Viacom lost of a lot of money thanks to them and decided to let them go, throwing the series into the same field of jeopardy. The links severed from MTV would mean lesser chance to reach at a music library, and ultimately a bigger struggle to secure a flowing setlist in future games.

I say it serves them right for acting that way. I never really liked arrogance in business, and to see it crumble when people decide to just not take interest due to any unforeseeable flaws (namely the price of the Pro instruments) shows that they should understand that the risk couldn't itself pay off.

Either way, I'm interested to see how it turns out. Whatever happens, this is a big wake-up call for the snobby RB fanboys that like creaming on us :P

[Edited in light of what was said below o_O]
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**expertwin** · Joined: 18 Mar 2010 Posts: 2244 Location: Meh.

If Activision buys Rock Band, does that mean no more Nirvana songs on either franchise?
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**TheGreatDave** · Joined: 18 Nov 2007 Posts: 209

ITT: Another person claims Neversoft have been shut down.

You may want to tell their site which is advertising for jobs on their upcoming action shooter game.

**Hafkie** · Joined: 12 Jun 2007 Posts: 1483

Um, there may have been layoffs earlier this year, but Neversoft is still around. They were taken off the Guitar Hero IP and they are currently working on a new project.

Just thought I should point that out for all the people that are saying Neversoft has been disbanded/closed/etc.

**Wooffus** · Joined: 11 Dec 2009 Posts: 837 Location: England

Well I guess I got the news all in a muddle. I thought there were some layoffs there, but weren't expecting them to work on different projects; sorry about that

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**noble** · Joined: 08 Jan 2009 Posts: 391 Location: Altamont, Il

**TerminX13** · Joined: 12 Mar 2009 Posts: 991

**youhas** · Joined: 21 Jul 2006 Posts: 3015 Location: Santa Clara, CA

**Wooffus** · Joined: 11 Dec 2009 Posts: 837 Location: England

I'm not saying the decision can be seen as dim; I'm sure I read something that at least several million dollars were already spent on beefing up only the graphics. If they wanted to throw ridiculous amounts of money out of Viacom's pockets, then it's a drastically severe risk to take especially in this current gaming climate. So of course it's logical that they were expecting sales for RB3 to be in its millions, not in the state that it's in now.

That said, I can understand that there will steadily be a larger growth of sales for RB3. However, due to the ridiculous amount of money that they spent developing the game, will it actually regain the money spent making it? That is what's conerning me more. :\
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**youhas** · Joined: 21 Jul 2006 Posts: 3015 Location: Santa Clara, CA

And to be certain, I'm not suggesting that the massive capital investment poured into RB3 is totally going to be worth it. 'Cuz it very well may not be! Banking so heavily on a new peripheral and pro-mode instrumentation is a very high-risk, high-reward sort of approach to things. You may end up capturing lightning in a bottle again, where the novelty of a keyboard and/or the prospect of legitimately learning instruments is a huge sell with the casual gaming public! Or you may end up where folks are all "meh", don't really give a damn, and you're still in the gaming doldrums all the same, no matter how much money you've thrown at the problem trying to fix it.

But honestly, Viacom's desire to sell appears to be totally independent of whether RB3 sells quite well, rather poorly, or anywhere in between. They'd bought into Harmonix under the thinking that this was potentially the New Big Thing; it's long since proven out that it's not. The sales of RB3 are like the locations of the chairs on the Titanic: no matter how well you arranged them, you ended up kind of hosed and consigned to disaster regardless, and inclined to divest yourself of the sinking ship as soon as reasonably possible.
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**noble** · Joined: 08 Jan 2009 Posts: 391 Location: Altamont, Il

I'm guessing (as honestly any of us who don't work at Harmonix or Viacom are doing), that Viacom had wanted to get out of the game business for a while, but out of respect to Harmonix waited until after the release of Rock Band 3 to announce they were for sale.

Because honestly if they had announced they were selling Harmonix three weeks before the game went on sale it would have torpedoed the game.

All but the hardcore harmonix/rock band fans would be like, oh these pro instruments must be shit, or this game must really be terrible if their parent company is trying to get out before the game hits.

I'm not saying that Rock band 3 is going to go on to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, or change the world, but I agree that there is no way that sales in just two weeks was a factor in their decision. I mean if it was about the money they'd want to wait until after the first holiday season of the game to dump it IMO.

Get all that christmas money from retail and DLC sales ;)

**Vampyromaniac** · Joined: 08 Feb 2008 Posts: 1216

Semi-off-topic but I think Rock Band 3 would have done MUCH better with better advertising. They should have advertised more to the public that this is a game that can actually teach you to play a real instrument, with some classic modes thrown in for good measure. From the people I've talked to about it, next to none of them knew that Rock Band 3 even had a mode that uses a real guitar, whereas most of them knew about power gig, and a good portion of them were considering buying it. I mean, power gig got a 4; it doesn't even chart songs correctly... but it was advertised better. The commercial may have been one of the stupidest I've ever seen but it got the idea out there that you can use a real guitar with this game.
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