Harmonix has gone through transitions today. The developer behind Rock Band and Dance Central has confirmed a small number of employees were let go, just as news hit that the studio had hired Zak McClendon, lead designer of BioShock 2.
Read more: Company previously looking for next gen, combat designer »
Harmonix will no longer be releasing DLC songs for its Rock Band series, and a few songs will soon be disappearing from the existing library because of expiring licensing deals.
"It was totally insane to expect people to drop $150 on a video game," Harmonix recounts as it releases a video in tribute of its final Rock Band DLC release. And yet, not only did millions of people join in on the Rock Band craze, they bought DLC. Lots of it.
According to new stats released by Harmonix, there were 130 million songs downloaded through Rock Band. Over 281 weeks, the Rock Band library expanded by 4,246, thanks to the combined efforts of Harmonix and the user-supported Rock Band Network.
Harmonix is the master of DLC releases. The studio has supported Rock Band for years, and has given Dance Central an equally impressive amount of support. The Dance Central 3 library includes over 200 tracks, but the developer has announced plans to stop working on any additional add-on content.
"As Harmonix moves forward with several new titles currently in development, the talented developers who make this content are needed on other projects," Harmonix explained. "With the Dance Central DLC team moving around, this month will be the last DLC for Dance Central 3 for the near future."
Harmonix has released DLC for the Rock Band series for 275 consecutive weeks. Over the past five years, over 4,000 songs have been released for the franchise. However, it's all coming to an end on April 2nd. On that day, Harmonix will no longer regularly release DLC for its music game.
Harmonix has spent years rocking living rooms with plastic instruments, continuing to pump weekly DLC into the Rock Band machine. Now there's a new way to rock out with those DLC tracks with Rock Band Blitz--with a standard controller. While putting together stellar performances isn't as easy in Blitz as it is in Rock Band, it quickly proves to be just as fun.
Rather than focus on playing music as a group of friends, Blitz is a completely solo experience. Players control all of the instruments themselves, focusing on each individual instrument and building all of their individual multipliers. Micromanaging each instrument track can prove to be overwhelming at first, particularly for anyone that jumps in head-first to the harder tracks. Sticking to only one instrument is definitely not an option, as players can only increase their multiplier by making sure each instrument track is taken care of before a checkpoint. This system took me a while to get used to, but once I got the sense of rhythm down, I was able to buckle down and start having a good time.
Harmonix is trying something a little different with Dance Central 3: a fully realized campaign story spanning decades, all centered around going back in time to stop a master criminal from destroying dancing. You might notice that the plot sounds amazingly hokey, and that seems like half the fun.
More pieces are falling into place for Harmonix's next game, but it's still a seemingly odd combination of game systems, especially for a studio known for its music titles. A new job listing seeks a combat designer to create "real-time, single-player combat experiences" for its new IP on next-generation hardware. The listing notes this game will be unlike anything Harmonix has done before.
We know that Rock Band Blitz will pull off some kind of song import voodoo from previous titles in the franchise, but the game will get its own tracks as well. Today Harmonix announced the last handful of songs, making the track list complete. New additions include Foo Fighters, Kelly Clarkson, and Queen.
Harmonix's third entry in their popular Kinect dancing franchise will be available on October 19th. Dance Central 3 promises more than 40 tracks on the disc, and some of today's revelations will be quite surprising.
The expanded tracklist includes Kpop song "I Am The Best" by 2NE1, as well as classics like "Everybody" by the Backstreet Boys, and "YMCA" by the Village People. Even newer songs, like "Moves Like Jagger" by Maroon 5 make an appearance.
Rock Band Blitz is a curious sausage, turning the plastic instrument series into a more-straightforward rhythm game you can play with a plain old regular controller. You'll get to bite into this bangin' banger at the end of August, developer Harmonix announced today, when it launches for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 at $20 (1,200 MS Points).
QUICKTAKE: It's difficult to imagine how much Harmonix could improve upon the Dance Central formula. The sequel vastly improved upon the original by introducing full body tracking for two players versus one. Dance Central 3 manages to one-up its predecessor by giving gamers the ability to create their own moves and free style without mirroring a set routine.
THE DEMO: I got paired with Dance Central 3's producer, Naoko Takomoto, in a Crew Throwdown battle against another journalist and a Harmonix choreographer. Crew Throwdown allows teams of four to compete in a series of challenges, including Keep the Beat and Make Your Move--two brand new modes that emphasize dancing freedom over mimicking existing routines.
Harmonix debuted Dance Central 3 at Microsoft's E3 press briefing, with an extended look at a song from Usher and a mini-concert staged in the middle of the conference. A separate press announcement announced a partial track list and a few dances you can look forward to grooving with.
While the Rock Band franchise has fallen out of the limelight, there's still plenty of reason to be excited by Harmonix's latest entry into the series, Rock Band Blitz. Blitz represents a significant departure for Rock Band. Not only is it a XBLA/PSN downloadable title, it also ditches instrument support altogether. The end result is a game that should appeal to Rock Band fans that continue to rock out and gamers that have dumped their plastic gear.
What makes Rock Band Blitz such an attractive proposition is its compatibility with the Rock Band library of games. In addition to the 25 songs that will be included with the game at release, Blitz will work with any song you've downloaded to your console's hard drive. Across DLC, Rock Band Network, and disc imports, that's a library of more than 3500 songs that can be accessed. For anyone that's invested in the Rock Band ecosystem, this is a great opportunity to get new life out of old songs.
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