If you remember the huge craze of the Guitar Hero/Rockband era a few years back, you know that everyone and their Grandma (literally) were playing them. But was that a golden age which is gone forever?
Alex Rigopulos (CEO of Harmonix) doesn’t think so. He recently stated that music is such a huge part of our culture as a whole, melding it with gaming is always something that can be viable. However, it’s simply their job to reinvent themselves and present it in new, innovative ways. “…one way or another, it will be back… music games need to evolve just like every aspect of pop culture. The band game boom was followed by a dance game boom, which will be followed by some other manifestation of music games–hopefully some of the new stuff Harmonix is working on!” he says.
Whether we’ll see a resurgence of the genre or not remains to be seen, but there’s no denying that an oversaturation is what led to its initial demise. Rigopulos agrees, but blames the pricing structure more than the number of units. “I think there’s probably some truth to the notion that Activision ‘over-published’ Guitar Hero … Reality is always more complicated than this. For example, it didn’t help that GH and RB were the most expensive video games on the market during a brutal recession.” Said Rigopulos.
While this gives a glimmer of hope that we may one day see new Rockband or Guitar Hero titles, no new projects are currently announced.