BREAKING NEWS. Viacom is the company that owns MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, etc. Well, because the Rock Band franchise has supposedly lost money in the last three years and because the price is right, Viacom has sold Harmonix. Hopefully, someone else will buy it, such as Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Apple, oh...ACTIVISION, as long as it keeps the RB series on life support. Besides, Viacom is garbage anyway with its diehard YouTube video removal campaign. And we all know that MTV is the epitome is evil/stupidity anyway.
This is somewhat startling news because of what happened between Activision and Red Octane (GH Developer). Activision throttled the life out of the GH series and then closed down Red Octane. Also, the newest Guitar Hero game (Warriors of Rock) absolutely bombed.
At least Harmonix still promises to continue work on the series while the studio is on the auctioning block. This is somewhat relieving news since I'm a huge Rock Band fan (as you could tell) and it sucks that a studio that actually cared about its product so much almost assumed room temperature. I just hope the choice of music doesn't suck because Harmonix is no long connected to the Viacom pipeline. If Harmonix is bought by someone else, I'll let you know.
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/11/rock-band-dance-central-dlc-ongoing-work-not-affected-by-viac/
http://kotaku.com/5687486/rock-band-will-still-be-rock-band-after-harmonix-is-sold
Even then, Rock Band has had a nice run so far so if the series were to die, then at least it did so with a sense of pride.
Worth mentioning about GH and RB history: Guitar Hero 1 and 2 were made by Harmonix and Red Octane. The two studios split afterwards. Harmonix (under Viacom) made Rock Band while Red Octane (under Activision) made Guitar Hero 3 and then on. So if you assume Rock Band is a crappy Guitar Hero clone, then you're wrong because the RB devs were there from the beginning. The more you know.
Also check out my list of RB DLC you should and shouldn't buy.
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