And the worst of the 3. Naturally.

I'm not surprised that Guitar Hero as a whole has been canceled. That's what happens when you get incredibly greedy and constantly release sequels - up to three or four per year. People are going to get sick of the product.

It's just too bad that they've screwed over Harmonix (a much more classy company, which made better music games in my opinion.)

I'm somewhat disappointed that True Crime: Hong Kong was canceled though. It had potential.

http://twitter.com/GuitarHero/status/35522467820736512#

Looks like the February pack is going to be the last of the DLC. I haven't really been a fan since Activision/Neversoft took over, but it's kinda crazy for it to just end all of the sudden with no warning whatsoever.

How is the Rock Band franchise doing?

Woah, that's surprising. (And that's definitely going to hamper sales of their last track pack.)

I can't imagine this will be good for the music game genre at all, but it will be nice if some of the Guitar Hero exclusive tracks are freed up now.

MTV Games was shuttered and Harmonix was sold off for 50 bucks. How do you think they're doing?

Ha. While that's true, that's not painting the full picture. MTV Games pretty much consisted of looking over Harmonix, Viacom didn't know what to do with them, and it gave them an excuse for a nice, big tax writeoff. The writeoff was more attractive than anyone ponying up what HMX is actually worth.

I don't think it's dire for Harmonix, but they will have to get their shit together to survive. Not being part of a massive corporation probably works to their benefit. They get to define success on their terms, but they can't structure themselves like they're gonna sell millions of copies anymore. Gotta be lean, sleek, and efficient. Don't really get the sense that's the current state of things at HMX.

I kind of developed a visual basic RPG-like game for band management which included getting band members, songwriting, touring and releasing albums (plus random events that happened every tour or year). It's very rough (just got in the basic framework). Probably could easily be adapted to the Rock Band franchise. Wouldn't know how to go about trying to approach them about it though.

Isn't it already niche?

Rock Band 2 = super popular, everyone owns it

Rock Band 3 = meh, only for the die hards

That seems to be the general consensus at least to me.

Isn't that my point?

Harmonix has Dance Central too, which is a big hit. And now that Guitar Hero is gone, at least a few GH diehards will probably check out this Rock Band thing they've heard about.

I think having only one music rhythm game right now is good for the genre. Two split the already dwindling market, but one can probably thrive, albiet as a mediocre hit.

Oops.

Guess that means no RHCP GH now. Hopefully that means we can see more RHCP on RB.

Yeah I wonder if exclusivity will just vaporize or if they'll still run the length of whatever contracts were signed.

Sounds like a good idea for an Iphone/android game. It could work in a similar vein as Game Developer Story.

Harmonix has apparently laid off about 12% of its workforce in the last month as well. Thankfully, Dance Central is selling very well (roughly 1.7m sold so far, that's nearly 1 person out of 4 that owns a Kinect, owns Dance Central) Rock Band 3 has only sold maybe a million copies across the 3 main platforms combined.

They're a creative, professional group of musicians and developers, I hope they can keep going. Been a fan of theirs since Frequency.

CNN says that Activision stock dropped 7% this morning.

I'd be surprised if the exclusivity contracts didn't have some sort of out in an event like this because Activision would actually be depriving the acts in question of this whole method of income by just sitting on the rights and not doing anything with them.

At the same time, if there's a company around that would just put the rights to big-name bands on ice just to spite their competitor it's Activision.

Well, Activision hasn't officially cancelled it, right? Just for the current year. Anything that's already published is still available as well.

Of course the situation is complicated. Activision obviously knows its dead (they've fired everyone) so even with the image of Activision as the Evil Corporation (which I just mentioned earlier) I don't think it's entirely out of the question that they just don't give a crap and are letting the individual licensees know that they're packing it in.

If not, I could see the whole thing playing out in the courts, and obviously you have to wonder if the ability to release music this way is even worth the litigation considering the state of the genre but on the other hand people have sued for much less.

Ultimately I think if there are people in the camps of the big "Guitar Hero"-exclusive names who want out they'd have a pretty good case if Activision wasn't understanding and cooperative.

Officially all they said was "No GH in 2011" and then they shuttered the division. Based on that, I can't see them coming back to it in 2012 just because it's a year later. There will have to be some kind of public outcry and demand for its return, and that's not going to happen, not in a year anyway.

I'm not arguing what we all think they will do. I'm talking more about the external, exclusive agreements.

They haven't cancelled anything that would void those contracts, is what I'm guessing. I'm sure they would incur penalties by breaching. The extent of that, I have no idea. Even letting them go to Harmonix for free would be detrimental if they really were planning a return next year.

Hell, even if they weren't planning a return, the faster that Metallica returns to Harmonix's library, the worse it is for back catalog sales.

For all we know they could have promised to deliver the RHCP game within a certain timeframe. I'm guessing Soungarden was never going to get anything more than the full-album DLC though. But yeah, if RHCP was expecting a game within a certain point they could have cause to terminate the deal.

Shares now down 10%

Really? Cause I can already see the "phoenix rising from the ashes" E3 video coming in 2012.