It looks like Harmonix will not be developing the next Guitar Hero game but rather Neversoft of Tony Hawk fame will be. Is this a good thing or bad thing? Many sequels have died when handed off to different developers. Do you think this will kill it for Guitar Hero? Maybe Neversoft will take the game to a new level - how about an opened ended game where you go to different clubs to show off your stuff? Read a little more about it here.

Considering the hack and butcher job they did on the latest Tony Hawk (style over substance? In a THPS game?! Fugdat!), I don't forsee good things for you Guitar Hero fanatics. Sorry.

I like Project 8. I stopped playing at THPS3 and recently picked up Project 8 which is pretty decent.

I believe there's an old quote that goes "if its not broken don't fix it."

While it certainly doesn't spell disaster for GH, it was doing absolutely amazing under Harmonix. The second game was astounding, with all new redone systems, and new better features. Even when GH1 was good, GH2 was even better in so many ways.

I'm a little concerned. I loved the informal "feel" of GH and I liked it when it was with small-time Harmonix. I can't imagine how much this game is going to change under a big budget company like Neversoft.

This doesn't look good. They should have just kept with the same developer. It would make sense, seeing Guitar Hero is very popular in some places ("the game was the fifth best selling game for all of 2006") and its not like the developer will go bust, right? Besides, this new change will add uncertaincey among fans and being uncertain about a game isn't good.

Well Harmonix got bought by MTV and Red Octane got bought by Activision. It's hard to stay indy when you have a BIG hit on your hands. Red owned the IP rights to GH and Activision wanted to keep all the profits in the family instead of sharing with Viacom so it makes sense that they brought the development inside. It was unlikely that either company would be the same after they were sold. I am not sure if the Harmonix purchase made sense. I mean from Harmonix side they probably knew they weren't going to do another GH so why not sell on top. MTV on the other is not in the games business in any real way. What they thought by buying Harmonix I will never understand. My guess is this is the last of what we will see from Harmonix. Game studios typically do not do very well inside big media companies. However it is great for the founders and a lot of the employees.

I can only imagine the effect this is going to have being under a big budget company. Being big budget generally gives the "EA effect": recycled garbage that they expect will sell because of the fan base only. And sadly it will.

Harmonix was good because it was indie. The Guitar Hero games were good because It had a very personal feel to it. It was funny and you can tell that the designers had an absolute ball just making it.

I shiver at the thought of those big budget idiots turning the amazing franchise into another recycled crap game.

I'm not sure Neversoft will destroy it (they have a good track record of producing decent games from terrible licenses, like Max Steel and Spiderman), but Harmonix invented the genre. While I'm not too crazy about Guitar Hero, I love both Frequency and Amplitude