When the Harmonix and Red Octane split, a natural rivalry was born. Guitar Hero had name recognition, but Rock Band had the innovation of bringing the full-band experience home. That differentiation is what drew the party lines so rigidly, but at the same time, it's what made the genre great.
Watching as Rock Band made a new innovation and then seeing how Guitar Hero would top it was just phenomenal. Then, something happened.
After the monster sellers that were Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the Guitar Hero camp decided to go full-band. While it was really the best course of action for the series, it just led to many of the same song choices and increasingly similar features between the two franchises. Then, the lines between the franchises were blurred even further as Harmonix began releasing single band-oriented games.
The issues culminated in 2009 when there was a grand total of eight titles released on the main consoles. Casual and hardcore fans alike were left begging the companies to stop releasing so many titles. With the economy so down in 2009, many fans were forced to pick one franchise to support, while leaving the other altogether. Many fans didn't see this as a huge loss, as the games were getting more and more similar with each release.
The companies certainly felt the issue growing as sales dwindled and both Harmonix and Activision were forced to lay-off employees. The genre was, without a doubt, in crisis mode. Then, suddenly, the companies seemed to collectively "get it". What they needed to do was not to copy the other guy, but rather to differentiate themselves enough to justify the purchase.
The root of this genre-wide change can be traced back to Activision recognizing that a change was needed during Bobby Kotick's keynote address, where he stated that the Guitar Hero franchise would be toned down, with less titles coming out each year. Then, as details regarding Guitar Hero 6 (now known as Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock) began to slowly leak out, it quickly became apparent that this was not going to be another Guitar Hero World Tour with shinier graphics.
In an interview with the Official Xbox Magazine, Guitar Hero Project Lead Brian Bright said ,"...the music selection is definitely more focused and rock'n'roll. It's about playing guitar and getting back to Guitar Hero 3's roots with everything we've learnt since then." This was a great sign for the franchise, but the rest of that article really showed that this iteration of Guitar Hero would be different in many more ways than simply the song choices. Now characters would be able to transform into evil alter-egos and gain special abilities that would raise scores, adding a completely new twist to the music genre and backing away from the notion that the Guitar Hero series was taking itself too seriously.
Guitar Hero isn't the only franchise making huge changes, however. A Harmonix rep recently stated that "You'll be surprised by how big Rock Band 3 is." So far, not many details have been announced, but what we do know so far will change the way the game is played. Now players will be able to play keyboards along with their favorite songs, as well as harmonizing the way they are able to in The Beatles: Rock Band and Green Day: Rock Band.
With all of the changes, it appears as though the rivalry is reborn. Hopefully the diverging paths don't converge again in the way they did before, as the fan interest in the genre in general tends to hinge upon the uniqueness of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles.
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Comments
Brian, really great read. I'm hoping Harmonix steers away from band-centric releases after Green Day, and REALLY innovates with RB3. Even I was surprised at myself - actually being passionately interested in GH: Warriors of Rock after the recent information came out. (I'm a jaded GH fan like many others post-GH3.)
Anyway, rambling aside, solid editorial!
Nice write-up. I didn't even look at it in the sense that the rivalry is reborn and it is interesting to see GH goin' back to it's roots while Rock Band seems to pushing for a more progressive stance and I think I credit that to DLC. RB can be the more progressive because if you ever challenge their dedication to hard rock, metal, or punk they can just point you into the direction if the largest official catalog of DLC in the history of videogames. So I don't think Rock Band suffers from some of the same problems that GH does. I look at GH as being really a setlist oriented title whereas I look at Rock Band, knowing their dedication to backwards an forwards compatibility, knowing thir extensive DLC which regularly sees substantial additions, and really I expect more on the feature and gameplay side of things than the on-disc setlist.
This will also be the first year HMX has had to follow a pretty well done GH after GH5. It'll be interesting to see how they handle that.
I should probably throw out there, because that did sound little bias, that GH and RB both have their pros and cons. I like 'em both, and I'm really excited for both entries in their respective series, but the wait for RB3 definitely has me more excited for it than anything else. Which explains why I kind of went on about RB so much there.
Even in the way the games are being hyped it's all about GH's setlist and RB's features. It's a tough thing to ignore.
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