Response to Questions about Viacom Selling Harmonix

[MaximusDM]

If Activision buys them, I might possibly castrate myself.

[Shredded]

If Activision buys them, I might possibly castrate myself.

Wow.

[sillystou]

Double wow.

[DANfan]

It's sad that not only did Harmonix lose the Guitar Hero IP (Which sadly since they lost the rights, has gone downhill very quickly) but now they might lose the Rock Band IP is saddening since they did so much to boost the IP to what it is. If Harmonix does lose the IP rights to Guitar Hero and Rock Band, I hope that a new developer doesn't run it to the ground just as Bobby Kotick's evil empire did to the once great Guitar Hero franchise.

Keep your head up guys, this could be an exciting or a disappointing new era in the Rock Band franchise.

[thatmarkguy]

It might have been a possibility, had the article not clearly stated that Viacom was going to continue fully supporting the studio until the buyer was found.

Which made me think that a buyer HAD been found, and the website was being brought down to add new branding and boilerplate to reflect the new parent company.

[Chocobo115]

Nintendo will buy it to screw both PS3 & 360 up. (I'm on the PS3 side)

[HairyMan]

Okay, tell me that not one of you doom and gloomers panicked when the site went down and thought that Harmonix was shut down and the employees were being escorted out.

I know some of you had that thought :-)

Fess up!

Heh. Had to admit, I had some initial bad thoughts when suddenly the forums went down and the "something's wrong" site went up.

As someone who works in an industry where mergers are constantly happening, when you have two companies who merge together and either form one new company, or the larger company buys up the older company, things WILL change. The company doing the buying will want to take some things from the company they are buying, but won't want individuals from that company making key decisions on existing products just yet. Really, it's the roughest if you're the people actually doing the work and not the executives. In the case of an entertainment industry, the people who really lose out are the consumers since a product they really like and really enjoy as it is may get drastically altered as a result of the merger.

I'm just hoping that when Harmonix is sold, they are sold to a buyer who will let them continue to be their own entity and will continue to let them perform as Harmonix. One thing that I almost automatically see happening is that the number of license deals made with artists will shrink, and in order to get the most out of those deals, the amounts of DLC each week could be reduced. Or DLC releases could be made every other week, etc. This way they can sign one artist for x-# of songs, then instead of releasing all 15 songs at once, they release three songs of theirs at a time and now they get to reap the profits of that artist over a 5 week time span.

I just hope that the purchase goes smoothly and that the new owner doesn't rip the existing franchise apart just so they can stick their own bloated ego into it.

[PCTraitor]

Microsoft will purchase Harmonix, and then we can all blame Sony for not trying hard enough

Well MS would surely miss Harmonix if they were to go away. They reap the benefits of DLC more than anyone considering how much is sold on Xbox and how little they have to pay to get it. Not to mention Dance Central is the closest thing to a killer app on Kinnect.

I guess the loss of money is the obvious reason, but with Dance Central just coming out to high praise and Rock Band 3 having the best metacritic score of a game in recent history I thought Harmonix was about to enter their upswing. I guess Viacom couldn't wait or the games are done and now all they want to do is sit back and collect the money without the overhead.

[JoshVanHalen87]

what if HMX buys HMX

[metalfenix]

what if HMX buys HMX

We'll have a paradox and the bacon will rule the world.