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''Rock Band'' is a series of music video games developed by Harmonix and MTV Games, and distributed by Electronic Arts for the Nintendo DS, iOS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii, and Xbox 360 game systems. The series, inspired by Harmonix's previous efforts on the ''Guitar Hero'' series, allows up to four players to simulate the performance of popular rock music songs by playing with controllers modeled after musical instruments. Players can play the lead guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, and drums parts to songs, as well as sing into a USB microphone. Players are scored on their ability to match scrolling musical notes while playing instruments, and by their ability to match the singer's pitch on vocals. The concept for ''Rock Band'' was formed while Harmonix was working on the ''Guitar Hero'' series, with the idea to expand the note-matching gameplay into multiple instruments. When their ''Guitar Hero'' partner, RedOctane, was acquired by Activision, Harmonix was acquired by MTV Games, a division of Viacom, allowing them to pursue the title. The first game in the series, ''Rock Band'', was released in 2007 and its sequel ''Rock Band 2'' was released in 2008. As the rhythm game market began to flounder in 2009, Viacom put Harmonix up for sale, but investors were able to buy the company, making it an independent studio. Harmonix would go on to expand the series, including obtaining the lucrative licensing needed for ''The Beatles: Rock Band'' in 2009. ''Rock Band 3'' was released in 2010 which introduced new "Pro" features and keyboard parts. Following saturation of the rhythm game market, Harmonix opted to wait on releasing another main title for several years. Following the release of the next generation of consoles, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Harmonix released ''Rock Band 4'' in October 6, 2015; the company does not plan to release further versions of the game for these consoles but instead see ''Rock Band 4'' as a platform they can continue to expand on through game patches. Each ''Rock Band'' game comes with approximately 40 to 80 licensed songs from across all ranges of rock music and spanning from the 1960s to present day. In nearly all cases, songs released for one game could be exported to be used in future games in the series. Further, Harmonix provided 275 consecutive weeks (between 2007 and 2013) of regular downloadable content, in the form of additional downloadable songs; with the release of ''Rock Band 4'', Harmonix has restarted these regular content releases. Harmonix has also created standalone Track Packs that contain either a selection of downloadable content, or a selection of band-specific songs. The company also designed the ''Rock Band'' Network to allow bands and labels to publish their songs as ''Rock Band'' tracks that can be purchased by players; the service was discontinued in September 2014 to allow Harmonix to focus on other projects. To date, over 13 million copies of ''Rock Band'' titles have been sold netting more than $1 billion in total sales. Over 4,000 songs representing more than 1,200 different artists are available in the franchise library, and over 130 million downloadable song purchases have been made.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.rockband.com/blog/rock-band-hits-3000-songs )〕 ==History== Prior to ''Guitar Hero'' and ''Rock Band'', Harmonix had already established itself as a company that made game products that focused on music interactivity. Born out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, the first product made by Harmonix was ''The Axe: Titans of Classic Rock'' for DOS-based computers, challenging the player to use four keys on the keyboard to match notes in several songs. Looking to find a place for this type of game, Harmonix' founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy looked to Japan where music games like ''PaRappa the Rapper'' were becoming popular. This led to the creation of ''Frequency'' and its sequel ''Amplitude'' for the PlayStation 2; both games featured the concept of matching notes for specific instrument tracks along lanes. However, in retrospect, Harmonix found that players had initially difficulty understanding the game, as the presentation was an abstract concept that did not immediately connect the gameplay to the music.〔 The idea of making an easy connection between the game and the music was used as a basis for their ''Karaoke Revolution'' games, which including using avatars singing and dancing in time to the music to strengthen the connection; this series was financially successful and helps to grow the company.〔 Harmonix was approached by RedOctane to help develop the software for the first ''Guitar Hero'' game, itself based on Japanese games like ''Guitar Freaks''. Harmonix used their previous experience in note-matching techniques from ''Frequency'' and ''Amplitude'', as well as the lessons learned in developed ''Karaoke Revolution'' to create the ''Guitar Hero'' software. Harmonix was less concerned on developing gameplay, and instead more on connecting the player to the music, working to track the notes of the songs appropriately on the five-button controller as to make the player feel like they are playing the real instrument.〔 ''Guitar Hero'' would go on to be a major success and found the basis of the ''Guitar Hero'' series.〔 As the success of the ''Guitar Hero'' series grew, Harmonix and RedOctane were purchased by MTV Games and Activision respectively, in 2006; MTV paid $175 million to acquire Harmonix. RedOctane continued to publish the ''Guitar Hero'' series, bringing Neversoft on board for development duties. Harmonix was contractually committed to completing one final title, ''Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s'', during and after the purchase negotiations. With MTV Games, a subsidiary of Viacom, Harmonix took their experience from developing ''Guitar Hero'' and ''Karaoke Revolution'' to create the ''Rock Band'' series. According to Harmonix Vice President of Product Development, Greg LoPiccolo, the Harmonix team had already envisioned the possibility of different instruments before they were completed with the ''Guitar Hero'' series; Rigopulos noted that the ''Guitar Hero'' work was only a partial approach to this, limited to what they could do on a "shoe-string budget".〔 Harmonix also embraced the idea of ''Rock Band'' as a platform rather than a software title, and took steps to incorporate downloadable content to extend players' music libraries without having them need to buy a new software disk. ''Rock Band'' was considered a success, leading to the development of sequels and spinoff titles. Viacom under the terms of the acquisition, paid out $150M in performance-based bonuses to Harmonix in early 2008 for their 2007 results, and were planning on a similar amount by the end of 2008. The ''Rock Band'' series scored what was considered a major coup by journalists when it successfully negotiated the rights to use the music of The Beatles in a video game, long considered a "holy grail" for music games. By 2009, the market for rhythm games in general started to fall. The market had become saturated with titles, mostly from Activision's expansion of the ''Guitar Hero'' series, and consumers affected by the late-2000s recession were less likely to buy costly instrument controllers. Viacom had already reported significant losses on the ''Rock Band'' series, and sales of ''The Beatles: Rock Band'' did not meet their expectation. Viacom sought a refund on the $150 million already paid for the 2007 bonuses following its reassessment of the series' 2009 performance. Harmonix, anticipating the slowness of the market, developed ''Rock Band 3'' with the introduction of several new features, including keyboards and Pro instruments, to create a "disruptive" game in the ailing rhythm game market. Though Viacom continued to support the series throughout 2010, it announced that it was seeking a buyer for Harmonix, citing the series' continued profit losses and Viacom's inexperience at being a video game publisher. Harmonix was eventually sold at the end of 2010 to Harmonix-SBE Holdings LLC, an affiliate of investment firm Columbus Nova, LLC that included Harmonix shareholders. Though the net liability of the sale was valued at nearly $200 million, including existing unsold inventory and ongoing music license fees, analysts believe that Harmonix-SBE paid only $50 for the company, taking on the total financial liability that Viacom was able to write off in their books. The MTV Games division at Viacom was later closed. As a shareholder-held company, Harmonix retained the rights to the ''Rock Band'' and ''Dance Central'' franchises, and continued to support and develop the games. The company still faced some fallout from the sale, laying off about 15% of its staff in February 2011. In the same month, Activision announced that it abandoned ongoing development of planned ''Guitar Hero'' titles, which many journalists considered to signal the end of peripheral-based rhythm games. Though Harmonix considered the closure of ''Guitar Hero'' as "discouraging", they affirmed that they would continue to develop ''Rock Band'' and ''Dance Central'' and support their downloadable content for the immediate future. Other journalists believed that without competition, Harmonix no longer needed to develop under the same pressure, allowing them to polish and innovate for future titles in the series, bringing a likely future resurgence of the market. In March 2012, Harmonix affirmed that it had no plans for a fourth major release title within the year, but was still strongly supporting the game through downloadable content through the year. By early 2013, the company stated that while they may come back to ''Rock Band'' at a future time, they were shifting resources to develop new titles, and later announced that it would discontinue its regular downloadable content for the series after providing over 275 continuous weeks of such content. Rigopulos stated at his keynote at the 2014 Penny Arcade Expo East that the studio has plans to bring ''Rock Band'' to eighth-generation consoles "at some point" and with "guns blazing". Rigopulos states that the studio is "waiting for just the right moment in the new generation of consoles to bring it back". Following two sets of unexpected DLC releases in early 2015 as a survey sent to ''Rock Band'' fans, the industry started to speculate that Harmonix was looking to revive the series. Bloomberg reported that Harmonix was currently working on a new version of ''Rock Band'' for the next-generation of consoles in late February. ''Rock Band 4'' was officially announced on March 5, 2015 at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco for release later in 2015. All current ''Rock Band'' DLC is supported in ''Rock Band 4''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rock Band」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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