Topic: Viacom to Sell Harmonix

[NWR_Karlie]

Rock Band developer on the market from MTV Games' parent company.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/24435

In a financial earnings statement released today, Viacom announced that they are in the process of selling Harmonix.

Viacom are auctioning the company, which is a money-losing business unit and has dragged down Viacom's earnings for several past quarters. They are now talking with several potential buyers. The sale will mark Viacom's withdrawal from the console game market. CEO Philippe Dauman said, "Harmonix has and will continue to create terrific video games, but for us, it is about focus. The console games business requires an expertise and scale that we don't have."

Harmonix noted in the Rock Band forums that the sale will not affect ongoing work as Viacom will continue to fully support the business until the sale is completed. Downloadable content for current titles, Rock Band 3 and Dance Central, is also unaffected. Partnerships with other companies such as EA Distribution are unaffected on existing games.

[nickmitch]

I kinda want Activision to buy them for the sheer irony of it.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Viacom selling Harmonix

.... Nintendo working on WiiMusic2?

coincedence.... hahaha LOL just kidding. that would be ridiculous.

[King of Twitch]

The console games business requires an expertise

This has to be a joke post

[Spak-Spang]

Nintendo buying them would be awesome...but it isn't going to happen.


Actually Activision buying them would be awesome.  Imagine being able to unify the music game industry again.  Ok Harmonix, you can do what you want with Rock Band, and here is our library with Guitar Hero...go.


That would be great.

[Shaymin]

I'm pretty sure Bobby K would buy it just to shut it down out of spite.

[Plugabugz]

3 years and nobody has even come close to my pledge yet.

[Morari]

Better go download all of your Rock Band DLC now before they're sold and the servers are shut down!

[Ian Sane]

Actually Activision buying them would be awesome.  Imagine being able to unify the music game industry again.  Ok Harmonix, you can do what you want with Rock Band, and here is our library with Guitar Hero...go.

While I would sort of like that in theory, I don't want ACTIVISION to win.  ****!  ACTIVISION!?  Come on!
 
A Harmonix and Red Octave reunion is what I really want.  If we can just have Activision not involved.

[ShyGuy]

I feely a guilty pleasure at Rock Band losing the financial competition to Guitar Hero, because of those insufferable Rock Band snobs...

[NWR_insanolord]

I feely a guilty pleasure at Rock Band losing the financial competition to Guitar Hero, because of those insufferable Rock Band snobs...

If Rock Band 3 didn't prove that Harmonix is better than anyone Activision has, I don't know what would.

[Kytim89]

Any chance that EA might buy them? I figure this because EA is a competitor of Activison and they have been publishing their  titles for a while now.

[Morari]

I feely a guilty pleasure at Rock Band losing the financial competition to Guitar Hero, because of those insufferable Rock Band snobs...

If Rock Band 3 didn't prove that Harmonix is better than anyone Activision has, I don't know what would.

I thought that RB3 was a big step backwards from RB2 in a lot of ways, actually. :\

[NWR_Lindy]

Activision would shut them down after picking them clean. Hopefully they aren't the highest bidder (but they could be if they wanted to).  I'd like to see EA buy them, which could work for them if they did smart things like having Harmonix make Facebook games or something.

[NWR_insanolord]

I feely a guilty pleasure at Rock Band losing the financial competition to Guitar Hero, because of those insufferable Rock Band snobs...

If Rock Band 3 didn't prove that Harmonix is better than anyone Activision has, I don't know what would.

I thought that RB3 was a big step backwards from RB2 in a lot of ways, actually. :\

How, exactly? In my experience it improves on its predecessor in a lot of ways, and I can't think of anything that is even remotely worse.

[Morari]

The visuals are worse in a lot of ways. The art style seems lacking. The character creator actually seems more limited, despite giving you a myriad of sliders. The graphics are VERY dark. The font throughout is VERY tiny, like it was in GH: World Tour. The microphone has numerous problems with recognizing cowbells and initiating overdrive. Every single person has to have their own character account set up to really play right, and assigning stand-ins is confusing. The list goes on.

From what I can tell, the only things they actually improved were: Added harmonies for vocals, finally introduced SDHC support, created a nice "overshell" to reduce the amount of backtracking through menus, lifted the restrictions on how many similar instruments are played at once. I have no intentions of purchasing a keyboard, so I can't tell you how that works... I'm going to say not too well though, simply because of the lack of truly keyboard-centric music worth listening to.

In a lot of ways, RB3 could have benefited from ripping off GH5's interface more. The running "jukebox" and mini-challenges worked so well there.

[NWR_insanolord]

In my experience, the interface is a ton better than RB2, though I'm playing on the 360 so it may be a bit different. Also, I do have the keyboard, and it's pretty cool.