Rock Band may undergo 'creative reinterpretation' - Harmonix

The rhythm-game genre has lost much of its rock star status since its Guitar Hero and Rock Band heyday. However, Harmonix, which created both of those franchises, appears intent on getting the band back together.

In an interview with Giant Bomb conducted by a former employee of the studio, Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos, CTO Eran Egozy, and VP of product development Greg LoPiccolo spoke about future plans for the Rock Band franchise. As part of that interview, Rigopulos indicated that the studio plans to heavily tinker with its approach to the rhythm-game genre in years to come.

"In the short term, we're basically continuing to attend to that business as we have been," Rigopulos said. "In the longer term, looking into next year, we're actually considering fairly fundamental creative reinterpretation of what the Rock Band business is."

Egozy expanded on the possible future direction for the franchise. "You might assume we're going to add saxophone or something along those lines, but no, the kind of direction we're planning on taking Rock Band, the kind of innovation we have in mind, is taking it in a different direction...one that's more suitable to the kind of environment we're in, what people are doing now, what they're interested in playing now, versus, say, 2007."

Rigopulos also spoke about the battle for music game supremacy between Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and he said past rivalries won't inform future business decisions. If the "right thing" were to come along, working with Activision would not be out of the question.

Harmonix's most recent game--the Kinect-enabled Dance Central 2--hit store shelves for the Xbox 360 today. The studio has not formally indicated whether it is developing a follow-up to 2010's Rock Band 3. However, in May, Rigopulos said that the studio is still developing new ideas and concepts to advance the Rock Band franchise."