Response to Questions about Viacom Selling Harmonix

[Kariodude]

Also why do all you people think that someone even wants to buy the studio? I think the IP's are for sale. This company has been losing money for the last 3 years. They have been bleeding $$$. Go look at the financial if you don't believe me. No one is going to take on those kinds of losses..

Shhh, you don't know what you're talking about. Your other posts about everyone getting pink slips is pretty dumb too.

[folkeye]

All this after reading the post about how successful the DLC was and how there's 'Big Plans for RB in the Future'.. guess this counts as a big plan. Hope there IS a future.

[ThornDavis]

Shhh, you don't know what you're talking about. Your other posts about everyone getting pink slips is pretty dumb too.

Yes, it was dumb, crass, and inconsiderate. It's not remotely fair to start hopping up an down on a company's forum yapping that everyone is about to be made redundant. Have some decency.

[JetWolf]

Also why do all you people think that someone even wants to buy the studio? I think the IP's are for sale. This company has been losing money for the last 3 years. They have been bleeding $$$. Go look at the financial if you don't believe me. No one is going to take on those kinds of losses..

Man, your every single post in this thread has been DOOOOM!, coupled with an undertone that everyone should just pack up now and go home because the party's over. It almost seems gleeful, like Harmonix ran over your favourite toy truck when you were three and you've just been sitting back and waiting for the day to revel in your schadenfreude.

ETA: Ooo I like how that looks. I think I'm going to rename my RB3 band to "Revel in Your Schadenfreude".

[espher]

Remember when everyone was terrified when Activision bought Blizzard? Everyone was terrified that something bad would happen.

StarCraft II release scheme. New Battle.net. etc.

Just sayin'!

[PCTraitor]

Well Activision was successful in burning the genre to the ground huh. There wasn't room for 2 games and now it looks like we could end up with neither. Yes Harmonix spent money to make the best game possible, but the audience was split and oversaturated by the other guys. Too bad. I hope it works out, but it's expect the worst hope for the best for me.

[Flawless]

A Viacom spokesperson informed Joystiq, "All we can say at this point is that Rock Band and Dance Central DLC will continue as planned and we will continue to fully support their releases."

Clearly doom.

[cmenear]

Not much love for EA in this thread...pretty much gloom and doom / blessing for Activision.

Think of it this way...

EA tried to take on Activision with the reboot of the Medal of Honor franchise...EA now has egg all over their face from that. CoD:BOps killed MoH.

EA needs something to battle Activision with. Guitar Hero was another one of those "staple" franchises in the ATVI portfolio. RB could give EA a leg up on ATVI with the purchase of HMX and the IP.

The quarterly statements over the last three years are actually a good thing when you think about it. Viacom is not going to be able to ask for truckloads of cash for a product that hasn't been raking in the dough. It will open the door to other suitors.

To me HMX is almost like a Tier 2 free agent (not a first round draft pick as noted earlier).

Ideally, as has already been noted, HMX needs to be acquired by someone that has revenue streams from somewhere other than video games. The fact that Viacom wants to get out of the video game business and focus on their other core businesses means just that.

I could see someone like a Disney or other large name corporation that already has their fingers in the video game industry, but doesn't get all of their bread buttered there.

For those of you talking about Microsoft buying them (and scaring the PS3 / Wii users), what about the flip side...Sony purchasing them and shutting out the Xbox owners! (I don't see either of those being truly viable...but out of the two, MS may make more sense because of the already noted Kinect relationship with Dance Central).

Rather than panic, I'm going to kick back and wait and see how things play out. I don't forsee anything happening for the next few quarters.

Oh, and Viacon reclassified the business so that moving forward, they do not have to report on gains / losses, not so they can shutter the doors (but that COULD happen if nobody steps up and offers cash for HMX).

One last note. As an ATVI shareholder, I will vote NO to the purchase of HMX if given the opportunity. I don't want a merger of the IPs.

[tanston]

Man, your every single post in this thread has been DOOOOM!, coupled with an undertone that everyone should just pack up now and go home because the party's over.

It's very hard to see how this ends well for us the users. The party is most likely over.

[chico76]

Would be interesting to see how DLC plays out. The best outcome is that we get RB DLC + GH DLC + RB Exports + GH Exports.

^^ This. It really makes a lot of sense for GH & RB to be "merged" in some manner. Having competing products doesn't help consumers as much as it divides what we're all willing to purchase and maintain. For instance, I stopped adding to my GH library a long time ago, only rented Band Hero, and haven't bought or rented GH:WoR.

My concerns if Activision were to acquire the game and/or Harmonix are:

a. Will Harmonix be allowed to continue to produce the game(s)?
b. How will the DLC be affected? Merging the 2 DLC libraries seems an impossible task, so someone is getting left out in the cold.

If re-authoring needs to be done, it would make sense to re-do the songs from the GH library, given it is significantly smaller, especially when you're already done on songs that are in both libraries. How many songs are only in GH that aren't in RB? Even if it was 200-250, it would seem like they could either farm it out to an RBN-capable firm or have NeverSoft take care of it before they get folded into Harmonix (assuming that would be the course of action).