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RedOctane Speaks Out on Guitar Hero's Future
njkid1 writes "In the first published interview since the news broke that Neversoft would be taking over development, RedOctane is speaking out on the decision and what it means for the future of the franchise. From the article: 'Internalizing development allows for more control of the creative elements of the game and, in this instance, provides for a much more robust and feature laden franchise. We believe that having the talented group at Neversoft, with their unprecedented string of market success with the billion dollar Tony Hawk franchise, develop the next Guitar Hero game will allow us to vastly enrich the consumer experience. We are excited to further the music and rhythm-based videogame genre, and Neversoft has the full experience, knowledge, and talent to do this.'" As nice as it is to hear from RedOctane, I'd rather hear the fully skinny from Harmonix.
I believe Dusty Welsh was planted by Activision corporate to head Red Octane after the acquisition. Bio here.
I'd like to hear what Red Octane REALLY thinks.
All Harmonix did was create 100% fun music games with a real feel for rock, from the Boston bands playing in their basement level up to overblown stadium rock. All they did was make it fun. And before that, they did the spot-on goofy Karaoke Revolution games.
All Neversoft has ever done is crank out tired sequel after sequel after sequel, of Tony Hawk (yawn) and Spider-Man (yawn, big yawn, slip into coma).
Red Octane can spare us the spin. This doesn't do the gamers any good. It's all management and marketing, and even though I was first in my neighborhood to have GH, KR, and DDR, it's going to be very hard to get me to give GH3 a chance.
The founder of Harmonix came and spoke to the MIT business school a couple months ago and basically said exactly that.