Developers Harmonix and Neversoft have spoken to Edge Magazine about the slumping music game genre, with an excerpt of their interview appearing in Edge-Online. Head of Harmonix Alex Rigopulos, maker of the Rock Band series published by MTV Games, has told the outlet that the music game category was hurt by the recession in 2009. He said the high price point of instrument bundles needed by new adopters hindered sales. He added that he doesn’t think the genre has peaked and that future titles will surpass sales set by their predecessors. Neversoft’s Brian Bright, project director for Guitar Hero games published by Activision, disagreed with his colleague on sales growth. Bright said it s a tall order for any title to match sales of the genre’s record-setting Guitar Hero III, also ranked by NPD Group as the second bestselling console title of all time in the US. Both developers agreed on some aspect of user-created content as key to growth for the genre, but differed in views on what the user-centric experience means. Rigopulos pointed to his company’s Rock Band Network as the next defining moment” for the evolution of the genre. He said the network enables user content by “power-users,” essentially the community of musicians who can use it to provide new content. Bright said that future music games need to empower all users with content creation, making a game out of the ability to make tracks as well as play them back as rhythm games.
Read more at Edge-Online.
