Harmonix Taking It to Activision with Rock Band 3

I will admit that I can be a dork and sometimes have a bit of fun with a plastic guitar or fake DJ turntable. Sometimes, there is nothing cooler than thinking you have incredible musical skills and can match a Metallica song note for note.

Red Octane (acquired by Activision) revolutionized the gaming world several years ago with Guitar Hero. Since then, Activision has been building on the series with several iterations and found itself in a battle with rival Harmonix in the music/video game genre. However, Harmonix is taking its product and development strategy to the next level with Rock Band 3 by narrowing the gap between smashing random buttons and playing actual music.

For the latest release of Rock Band, Harmonix is providing a 25 key midi keyboard where the hardest difficulty level will have players utilize all 25 keys and be very close to playing real music. New to this version will also be guitars with real strings (where one will be a full sized Fender replica).

I applaud Harmonix for their competitive positioning here — by bringing innovation to what I consider a stale genre, pushing gamers that consider themselves masters of the plastic musical instrument to actually take the next step and be closer to a true guitar hero. Business growth strategies from management teams such as this one are necessary to surviving in a highly competitive console game marketplace (especially as many consumers are gravitating to web-based social gaming).
-KKF