Following reports last month that Viacom was looking to offload Rock Band developer Harmonix, today Harmonix’ PR guy John Drake posted a note on the Rock Band forums announcing the news: instead of being sold to another big publisher like EA or Sony, the Harmonix team has bought the company themselves.

Harmonix is now officially an independent, privately-owned studio. An investment company named Columbus Nova provided much of the capitol that Harmonix needed to buy the company from Viacom. As a result, there is now a new company called “Harmonix-SBE Holdings LLC.”

What does all this mean for you? If you’re a Rock Band or Dance Central player, fear not. There’s still plenty of DLC on the way for both games, and all past titles will continue to be supported by Harmonix. Drake also noted in his post that, “we’re hard at work on some unannounced projects that we think you’re going to be pumped about.” Thus, any and all future titles will be published under Harmonix’ own umbrella company.

The one thing fans are left to ponder: without the connections and resources of Viacom and MTV Games, will Rock Band still be able to attract so many big-name bands?

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News broke today that Harmonix — the creator of Rock Band — is being sold by its owner, Viacom. No buyer yet is lined up, but the bottom line is that Viacom wants to offload the company because it’s losing money.

For years now, the music game subgenre has been in decline, with sales numbers receding faster than Donald Trump’s hairline. Enthusiasts still adore the games and eagerly await new releases, but music games seem to have over-saturated store shelves to the point that casual gamers no longer see the value in buying new games and controllers, when they’re usually little more than variants on the same old theme. Industry analysts have been suggesting that the days of music games are numbered.

For what it’s worth, Harmonix absolutely remains at the forefront of the genre. Activision keeps creating competition with the Guitar Hero franchise, and Power Gig recently tried to gain some footing with the use of a real-life guitar. But Rock Band remains king of the hill, largely because Harmonix has been so committed to constantly adding new media for gamers to play and enjoy. Rock Band 3 has only been out a few weeks, and critics and players both have praised the game’s novelties, including the first-ever keyboard in a music game and a guitar controller that has actual strings. Plus, Harmonix’ latest title, Dance Central, which works exclusively with Kinect, is the closest thing Kinect has to a killer app.

But as cool as Dance Central is, it’s not like dancing games haven’t been around for a while now. It’s one of only a handful of music-related game types. Where shooters and adventure games and platformers and racing titles are always finding new and exciting angles, with wild new ideas, music games are still following the same old blueprint: gamer simulates music-playing.

Where are the wild new ideas? Enough with the baby steps — where are the giant leaps? Why haven’t music games made any real advancements since they began?

I don’t think Harmonix is going anywhere — the have far too smart a business model for that — but casual players are never going to be excited by music games again until somebody hatches an idea big and revolutionary enough to match that first innovation that created the genre in the first place.

The original Guitar Hero introduced us to a game that let players simulate guitar playing by using software and a specialized, guitar-shaped controller that worked together seamlessly to create the illusion of actual musicianship. Music games need another enormous, cognitive leap that matches or exceeds the effect that Guitar Hero first had on players, or quite simply, the genre will die.

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This is how they would have played Rock Band in Back to the Future Part II. You know, if Rock Band had existed back in the 80s when the Back to the Future movies were filmed, so they could have predicted how Rock Band might look in the future. Only the future to them was 2015, which is just five years away from us in the here and now, and their late 80s predictions of our near-future are turning out to be so thirty years away.

Anyhoo.

Check out this brilliantly-made video that shows what everybody’s favorite video game music simulator might look like in the future. Something like this might put a lot of professional music instructors out of work.

A long-awaited holy grail of rhythmic games is finally coming to pass. Harmonix and MTV Games have just announced that Rock Band 3 is adding a piano keyboard to its collection of instruments — a collection that already includes guitar, bass, drums, and three microphones (for three-party harmonies). That’s seven players that can rock out together at one time.

Before you get too excited, I should point out that the new piano peripheral is a small, two-octave keyboard, sporting just 25 keys. The drum kit is getting an upgrade that includes three cymbals, and the two guitars available for Rock Band 3 will have actual strings.

As the world of simulated musicianship edges ever closer to realistic music playing, Harmonix has wisely chosen to include a Pro mode in Rock Band 3 that will teach you how to play your chosen instrument or instruments for real.

83 songs are being added to the Rock Band library with this entry, along with access to the Rock Band empire’s nearly 2,000-title song list. Among the new songs:

• Metric, “Combat Baby”
• Rilo Kiley, “Portions for Foxes”
• Them Crooked Vultures, “Dead End Friends”
• The Vines, “Get Free”
• The White Stripes, “The Hardest Button to Button”
• Phoenix, “Lasso”
• Ida Maria, “Oh My God”
• Juanes, “Me Enamora”
• Jane’s Addiction, “Been Caught Stealing”
• Smash Mouth, “Walkin’ on the Sun”
• Spacehog, “In the Meantime”
• Stone Temple Pilots, “Plush”
• Dio, “Rainbow in the Dark”
• Huey Lewis and the News, “The Power of Love”
• Joan Jett, “I Love Rock and Roll”
• Night Ranger, “Sister Christian”
• Whitesnake, “Here I Go Again”
• The Cure, “Just Like Heaven”
• Ozzy Osbourne, “Crazy Train”
• Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody”
• Jimi Hendrix, “Crosstown Traffic”
• The Doors, “Break On Through”

Click here for a complete gallery of screenshots from Rock Band 3 and images of its peripherals.

But despite being up to my eyeballs in Rock Band DLCs I’m already earmarking money for next week’s purchase because it’s gonna be an awesome bunch of songs. Harmonix and MTV Games has announced that Jane’s Addiction will be the featured artist for next week’s DLC release. Jane’s Addiction’s Nothing’s Shocking album will be finally released after so much delay. Actually, the first announcement of this release was made way back in August last year but unforeseen delays has resulted in the album only being released next week. Players can download almost all of the songs from the seminal album — I say almost because Mountain Song will not be available since it is already included in the Rock Band 2 game. The ten songs will be sold for $1.99 or 160 MS points or 200 Wii points. It can also be bought as a bundle for $15.99 or 1280 points.

But that wait is now over. Apple Corps has announced that the entire Beatles catalog will be remixed and rereleased on the same day as the Rock Band game. Along with this, there will be two new Beatles CD box sets to be released on that day. This is the greatest music news I’ll probably get the whole year. All 12 studio albums will be released along with Magical Mystery Tour and a combo disc that contains two Past Masters releases.

The remixes will now turn the old Beatles albums to glorious stereo. But no worries for purists — The Beatles in Mono box set will also be made available.

I’m going to start saving up today for these absolutely wonderful releases.

What does 38″ long by 22″ wide and 17″ tall ottoman mean? Well to some it may mean extra space to park crashing friends in a small flat, BUT now it seems the old ottoman has found new function… say in keeping your Rock Band controllers!

I’ve been to some of my friends’ homes and well, you’d see the “organized chaos” with those Rock Band controllers left in a corner, on a corner table, under the Christmas trees (ha! yes, some of them still have their trees!). Still some of them would compromise by putting it in their coat closets and (much worse) under the kitchen sink.

I’d play the good friend by pointing them here so they can see a solution to their storage woes. Enter the AK Rock Box Gaming and Storage Ottoman with Drum Lift (Dark Brown). It’s a little pricey for a solution at US$199.99, but still, some of them wouldn’t mind putting in extra cash for home order.

It seems like a good idea too because it is currently out of stock at Amazon.

Check out the features:

- Stylish, handsome ottoman for your living room stores Rock Band gaming accessories
- Eliminates clutter while keeping your Rock Band instruments ready at a moment’s notice
- Enough interior space to store two gaming guitars, a foot pedal, and a microphone
- Specially designed AK Drum Lift raises and lowers Rock Band and Rock Band 2 drum kits with easy one-hand motion
- Measures 38 inches long by 22 inches wide by 17 inches tall and weighs 61 pounds; all instruments, accessories, and games are sold separately

But with a new announcement from The Beatles’ camp fans will have further reason to go grab the game when it arrives. According to Dhani Harrison, the son of George Harrison, the game will also include previously unreleased material. He was quoted as saying that the song selections will include tunes that “has never been heard, never been released.” Harrison did not reveal any other details about this but he did say that the game will be historically accurate.

Rock Band: The Beatles will arrive on September 9 on the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii platforms. The standalone game will be offered at $59.99, while the full band bundle will be at $249.99. The bundle will feature a new drum set, guitar and microphone that’s modeled after The Beatles’ instruments.

I loved playing some of the Pearl Jam songs that have managed to enter the music genre, first with the added content for Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360, and then with Rock Band 2′s inclusion of Alive from their debut album.

Now Peal Jam fans will have the opportunity to play all the tracks from their Ten album. Rock Band 2 will release the album as a DLC on March 24, 2009, coinciding with the release of the reissue of their seminal album.

I can’t wait to play Even Flow and Black!

Harmonix announced that Nirvana will finally get the Rock Band treatment it deserves as it releases a seven-song pack from their album Nevermind. The seven songs (all of them master recordings) are:

“Breed”
“Lounge Act”
“On a Plain”
“Polly”
“Something in the Way”
“Stay Away”
“Territorial Pissings”

Xbox360 owners will get the songs on Oct. 21 while PS3 owners will get it on Oct. 23.

This frustrates me so much because of my guitar problem. Have to rectify this immediately!

I play frequently enough that my skills are steadily improving but still responsible enough to stop playing during a work week. So there I was on a Friday night eagerly plugging in my Playstation 3 and popping in my game. And my guitar controller was not communicating with the usb receiver! I thought for a moment it may be the batteries so I popped in fresh ones. It did communicate, but only for a second, and then I got this intermittent signal drops. It was irritating as hell.

I went to online forums and discovered that this has happened to other RB players too. Unfortunately, no one has been able to pinpoint the problem yet, much less the solution. RMA’ing the guitar is the only solution, but that’s not a solution that I can take.

This only means I’ll have to spring for a new guitar. I guess between now and when Guitar Hero: World Tour is released, I’ll pretty much have RB-free weekends.

I consider myself a hardcore Rock Band/Guitar Hero player. It’s gotten so bad that it’s the only game I play all week. I haven’t even removed the shrink wrap from my copy of GTAIV.

But apparently, there are players out there that are more hardcore than I am. These are the players who actually build minature stages to really simulate the feel of performing for an audience. For these guys a riser or an elevated stage is not enough, lighting effects are an important part of the whole illusion.

PDP’s Rock Band Stage Kit is a great peripheral for these uber-serious gamers. It’s a great device that combines a compact LED lighting system, strobe effects and fog effects in one machine. The Stage Kit attaches to the Xbox 360 through a USB port and this enables it to interact with in-game performances. The folks at PDP actually collaborated with Harmonix to program actual in-game cues to both Rock Band and Rock Band 2. This means more accurate rendition of effects to the music and your performance, a big improvement or poor sound sensors that other solutions provide.

Space constraints in my house prevents me from getting this but I salute the Rock Band player who has the deep pockets and the space to really take advantage of thise gizmo.

I haven’t been playing my Rock Band game as much lately because of all the reports I’ve read online about the drum pedal snapping in two. The pedal is made of plastic and based from the way it’s constructed, vigorous use of the pedal will really make it break. I’ve been trying to find a way to DIY my pedal by attaching a metal pad on the pedal to reinforce the whole thing but I’m not much of a handy man.

Fortunately I met a guy online who was making custom Rock Band pedals using a magnetic switch and a real drum pedal. To say that a drum pedal is sturdy is an understatement. I can use the damn thing as a weapon if I want to. The great thing about using this sturdy pedal is that I don’t have to worry about breakage. I just kick pedal in complete abandon. This has radically improved the way I play and I’m pretty sure I’ll become more adept at the drums because of my new gadget.

Now if I can just find a way of modding my temperamental Rock Band guitar…