I suppose it was silly of me to think that Guitar Hero III wasn’t going ahead when Rock Band was announced. It was discovered today on RedOctane’s Q&A section the game is still going ahead without Harmonix.

They don’t state who will be making the game, however, cast your mind back to when Activision bought RedOctane after the release of Guitar Hero. After the success of the game they clearly saw huge potential in the franchise and invested in the companies future. Activision then worked with RedOctane to publish Guitar Hero II which was made by Harmonix (who worked on the first Guitar Hero and were purchased by MTV in late 06). Earlier this year it was announced that the development of the franchise was being delegated to Tony Hawk’s creators Neversoft and until Rock Band was announced last week - this didn’t make much sense because Harmonix were clearly doing a great job with the franchise.

So what does this mean for the common gamer (us) then? This winter will see the release of two excellent music games (at least we can be sure one of them will be good) which are both highly anticipated. In my opinion, it is a shame that the multitude of companies involved have split apart and will be competing in the market. Rock Band seems to be the culmination of Harmonix’s experience with music games so far, Guitar Hero, FreQuency, Amplitude and Karaoke Revolution have all prepared them for the hugeness of what Rock Band hopes to achieve. With the finance behind Rock Band and the brand name behind Guitar Hero it is hard to predict which will be the rhythm game of choice this holiday season. I’m happy in the knowledge though that we will be getting hold of two awesome rhythm games this year instead of just one (don’t forget Ouendan 2 is out this year too, that makes 3 great games on the radar!).

Thanks to 4cr for the heads up

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