14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier we found out that Viacom, the parent company of MTV Games, has decided to sell video games developer Harmonix, who is in charge of both Rock Band and Dance Central development, to an investment firm called Columbus Nova, and now the price for the transaction has been revealed to just be 49.99 dollars.
A report from All Things Digital, a site focused on news from the world of technology, cites unnamed source inside the companies involved saying that the price was set this low in order to disguise the other responsibilities that the investment firm has taken on after gaining ownership of Harmonix.
It seems that Columbus Nova will now pay all music rights associated with main tracks and with downloadable content and is also responsible with paying for the remaining copies of Rock Band games and for the plastic instruments that are manufactured for them.
Sources also suggest that the low sale price masks the benefits that Viacom gets from it, like receiving a tax benefit which is linked to the losses it has sustained from Harmonix and the fact that liabilities associated with Harmonix, about 100 million dollars worth of them, are no longer the company's problem.
When Viacom picked Harmonix up it paid more than 175 million dollars for the company and also agreed to provide some pretty serious bonuses to those who worked on the development of then very successful Rock Band series.
Since then the market for music based games has declined heavily, with both Rock Band and Guitar Hero from Activision selling a limited amount of copies, probably because of market saturation and the weak economic situation which has limited the gaming purchases of many gamers.
Harmonix has managed to create a new and interesting niche for itself with Dance Central, the Kinect powered Xbox 360 exclusive dance game that was released in 2010.