Response to Questions about Viacom Selling Harmonix

[Bront20]

Did I miss the discussion already about how Viacom sold off HMX for only 50 bucks?

I mean, tax write-offs as well, but this is HUGE insult to the company and genre in my eyes.

Yeah I saw it on RockBandAide, if Viacom really sold HMX for 50$, thats like giving them away for free. 50$ is pocket chnage for them, it should have been atleast a million.

It was $50 and all of Viacom's financial liability, which will reportedly save or help Viacom receive around $150 million in though tax benefits.

[LoopyChew]

Anyone who's wondering about the $50 thing, let's give you a hypothetical situation:

You have this awesome money-printing machine that gets you $1,000,000,000 every month...for every $999,999,995 you put into it. Yes, you make money, but you need to both have a crapload of money and pump a crapload of money into it in order to do so.

I'd wager Viacom pretty much sees Harmonix in that light. They may make money, but the upkeep for it is so high they don't believe it's worth it anymore. Heck, we don't even know if they make back the money they cost (I'd line my bets with Billboard that it's mostly music licensing), so what can I say?

In that light, it makes sense that they only sell it off for a token amount, because their money-printing machine would have some severe drawbacks to it.

[Indraco]

So just like the rest of us they spent $50 on the base product, but ended up blowing a fortune on songs and peripherals.

[LoopyChew]

So just like the rest of us they spent $50 on the base product, but ended up blowing a fortune on songs and peripherals.

Have I told you lately that I love you?

[sigil82]

So I guess we won't get iCarly, and Teen Nick tie in DLC forced on us from this point forward

I have kids so I didn't find anything wrong with them. In fact my kids love the SpongeBob songs and truth be told so do I? Besides How was it forced on us? Did they encourage you to purchase it by gun point? I for one hope they will continue to provide music for all ages and demographics *sigh* yes even the occaisional hip-hop and country tracks/artists (both of which I don't have a penchant for) to help cultivate the user base and keep our precious RB franchise going for years to come.

[Bront20]

I have kids so I didn't find anything wrong with them. In fact my kids love the SpongeBob songs and truth be told so do I? Besides How was it forced on us? Did they encourage you to purchase it by gun point? I for one hope they will continue to provide music for all ages and demographics *sigh* yes even the occaisional hip-hop and country tracks/artists (both of which I don't have a penchant for) to help cultivate the user base and keep our precious RB franchise going for years to come.

I think some people may feel forced to buy the free ones (I do, but not by HMX, by my own personal drive to take advantage of free stuff). But outside of that, I don't see anything wrong with the Sponge Bob songs. Heck, "I Can't Keep My Eyes Off You" is pretty awesome on guitar. Only one song was a real stinker to play, and given they were all $.99 (or cheaper if you got the pack for some folks). I hope we continue to occasionally get some surprised like this, as they're easy to ignore if I end up not wanting them, and they're occasionally a fun (and usually cheap) surprise.