Game developer behind The Beatles Rock Band was bought by Viacom in 2006
Even the Beatles couldn't work it out. Viacom last night sold out of its ailing video game franchise Rock Band ? home to last year's be-your-own-Beatle title ? ending an ill-fated foray into gaming.
Viacom ? which also owns MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures ? sold the Harmonix game developer to investment firm Columbus Nova, gaining an estimated $200m (�129m) from the deal. The exact sale price was not disclosed.
Viacom bought Harmonix in September 2006 for $175m (�113m) as it looked to extend its reach into the lucrative gaming industry, but failed to develop the business in the way it had hoped.
Harmonix had developed the original ? and more successful ? Guitar Hero games, but switched to Rock Band after the Guitar Hero franchise was taken over by larger rival Activision.
Although the Beatles version of Rock Band sold in similar volumes to Guitar Hero 5 last year, the general decline in video game sales meant that the franchise was hit hard last year, and the company lacked the product depth to compensate.
A year on, Viacom concluded that it didn't have the necessary nous to make the Rock Band franchise work. "Harmonix has and will continue to create terrific video games, but for us, it is about focus. The console games business requires an expertise and scale that we don't have," chief executive Philippe Dauman said.
Viacom, and its controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone, has repeatedly tried to reproduce the success of MTV and develop investments outside television. Redstone invested in another games company, Midway, home to Mortal Kombat, but that too ended in failure and a sale for just $100,000 in 2008.
Wall Street analysts have always had doubts about the media giant's ability to ingratiate itself into gaming. "The decision to sell Rock Band is welcome news," said Christopher Marangi, an analyst at Gabelli. "The franchise has been a disappointment and a drag on earnings."
Despite a strong early return, sales of the three Rock Band games have fallen steadily since then, in line with wider music-based games. Towards the end of 2009, and despite the much-hyped release of The Beatles Rock Band, Viacom warned that the franchise would just about break even and that the economics of the series were "improving, though not as quickly as we'd like". It was soon apparent that even the Beatles edition wasn't going to do the business Viacom had hoped for.
Sales of recently-released Rock Band 3 have been similarly stagnant, despite allowing games to use real musical instruments. But with newfound independence, Harmonix now insists the music game industry is alive and well and that it was "hard at work on some unannounced projects that we think you're going to be pumped about".
"We are excited to be returning to our roots as an independent and privately-owned studio," it said.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/dec/24/rock-band-developer-sold-by-viacom
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