The upside though is that the company was finally working with publishers, and generating at least some money. But Alex revealed that the company almost stopped making music titles because of a much more successful title that followed afterwards:
“…there was one non-music game that we should mention. It was the EyeToy: AntiGrav, developed for Sony. It turned out to be the worst-reviewed game from a critical review standpoint, yet it sold four times as well as Frequency and Amplitude.
We got really gloomy. We started to wonder if everything we were trying to do was just a fool’s errand. When it came to making music games, we couldn’t make any money or even a return for our investors. We were paying the bills, but to go on with the business would have been a departure from the founding premise of the company.”
After the creation of Eyetoy: AntiGrav, the team at Harmonix was contacted by RedOctane to create a guitar music game using the company’s guitar peripheral, giving birth to the franchise we now know as Guitar Hero. And with the game actually increasing in sales every month, contrary to industry expectations, many companies started to take notice of the small team.
“Around that time, the winter of 2006 — as Guitar Hero was snowballing — Activision acquired RedOctane. Suddenly, there were all these game publishers trickling around Harmonix. We had many suitors, but what was so interesting was that MTV was interested. They totally ‘got’ us as a music company. Harmonix has always been about music first — games are a means to an end for us.”
“As an entrepreneur you never want to lose site of the mountaintop you’re trying to get to, but you have to remain incredibly flexible about the path that you take to get there, which often needs to change direction. Fortunately, we didn’t have to abandon the mountaintop.”
And as I’m sure everyone can attest, we’re glad they didn’t give up, despite everything that happened. Stay tuned on PlayStation LifeStyle for all your gaming updates, and make sure to look out for The Beatles: Rock Band when it releases September 9th.
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