Harmonix may 'evolve' past music, explore motion games

Speaking to Destructoidin a recent interview, Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos hinted at some of the developer's plans for the future, including the possibility of branching into new genres.

"... We have a lot of very cool new ideas in the works right now, looking out beyond both Rock Band and Dance Central," said Rigopulos. "It's also worth pointing out that for the first time, I see Harmonix potentially evolving past exclusively focusing on music games."

The CEO went on to explain that the music genre is Harmonix's entire "reason for being," but that the developer is "incredibly creatively motivated by motion gaming."

"Of course, dance games are a special intersection of music games with motion gaming. Harmonix has developed a competency and quite a passion and interest, generally speaking, in the area of motion gaming. So I think one of the things that you may see coming out of Harmonix in the future is more activity in the area of motion games."

Rigopulos' comments come after a tumultuous time for both Harmonix and the music game genre. Viacom recently sold the developer to investment firm Columbus Nova and it's new affiliate, Harmonix-SBE Holdings LLC, making it a privately-owned independent developer, and last month, it suffered an undisclosed number of layoffs. Meanwhile, Activision axed its Guitar Hero franchise last month, stating that the music game genre is on the decline.

The CEO was sure to assuage fears that Harmonix would abandon its existing franchises (as Activision apparently has), by saying that the company is still very committed to both Rock Band and Dance Central.

He added, however, "There's a hell of a lot of new creative work being done on new IPs that we're pretty fired up about."

[Source:Destructoid]

Mar 1, 2011