14 DAY TRIAL // The leader of publisher Electronic Arts has suggested that the days of the music genre of video games are not over, despite the fact that the leading brands in the space have seen falling sales in the last few years, with motion tracking based dance seen as the feature that could revive them.
Speaking to Kotaku in an interview, John Riccitiello, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Electronic Arts, has said, “I think the music genre is going to recover. I don't know exactly how. It could be based on some new innovation. Maybe it all becomes dance-based.”
Electronic Arts is deeply involved with the genre, handling the distribution duties for the Rock Band franchise, which is jointly developed by Harmonix and MTV Games.
Recently Viacom, the company owning Harmonix, has announced that it is putting the developer up for sales, citing a sales performance that was lower than expected when the company was initially bought.
The media conglomerate says that there are already some buyers interested in Harmonix Viacom has also sought to take back some of the performance based bonuses it has handed out to the developers at Harmonix, which suggests that the media oriented company sees no reason to continue pushing for development in the music genre.
Riccitiello's comment about dancing is linked to the launch of Dance Central, the Xbox 360 exclusive dance title created for the Kinect motion tracking system, which allows gamers to follow complex routines without using any physical controller.
Harmonix has also launched Rock Band 3 this fall, allowing gamers to play keyboards for the first time in the history of the series while also delivering Pro modes for other instruments which make the playing experience closer to real life than ever.
The game sold better than its main rival, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, but did not manage the initial numbers of Rock Band 2.