Rock Band not just a game but a platform for music
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In general, I don’t like the full on publication of interviews. Call it my journalism brainwashing telling me the reporter has to cull the good quotes from the interview. OXM’s interview with Alex Rigopulos, CEO of Harmonix, actually has some rather enlightening dialog on what Harmonix really wants to achieve with Rock Band. (Found through 1up.com)
Among the many exciting things Rigopulos has to say, the most interesting for me was his vision of how we’re going to experience music in the near future.
In 3 to 5 years people are going to expect to be able to play with music as the normal way that they experience music that they love. If you have a favorite band that releases a new album, sure you’ll buy the CD but you’ll also want to go onto the Rock Band server the game levels based on those 15 new songs to experience them as an active participant in the music-making. But this is how people are going to come to expect to experience the music that they love.
He later said of music distribution through Rock Band:
In the same way that MTV has promoted artists through the video medium on their channels, we actually see Rock Band as a way to break and promote new artists to the audience of people that are playing the game. So that’s definitely something that’s part of our plans.
It’s nice to know that my thoughts on how to best utilize Guitar Hero turned out to be what they wanted to do all along.
Also exciting are plans to be able to export your character onto the Rock Band Web site and convert that into different kinds of merchandise, from t-shirts to bumper stickers. Figurines are mentioned by both OXM and 1up, but I don’t see it in the interview.
So, to get Rock Band or to not get Rock Band? That’s a lot of money to drop on one game, but if Rigopulos’ vision comes true it will be the future of music content delivery anyway.
Tags: Alex, harmonix, playstation-3, ps3, Rigopulos, rock-band, xbox
