‘Harmonix: Embrace Your Inner Rock Star’
A few years ago you had probably never heard of Harmonix, and you may still not know who they are, but you have likely heard of one of their most successful products, Guitar Hero. In 2005 Harmonix, the videogame design studio, released Guitar Hero, which subsequently became the fastest videogame in history to top $1 billion in North American sales. The game concept focuses on a plastic guitar-shaped controller. Players press coloured buttons along the guitar neck to match a series of dots that scroll down the TV in time with music from famous rock tunes. Players score points based on their accuracy. Just two years later, Harmonix released Rock Band, adding drums, vocals, and bass guitar options to the game. Rock Band has sold over 3.5 million units with a $169 price tag (most videogames retail at $50 to $60). Between the launch of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Harmonix’s founders sold the company to Viacom for $175 million. The terms of the sale allowed Harmonix to retain operational autonomy while providing them greater budgets for product development and licensing music for their games. Harmonix’s success, however, did not come overnight.
The company was founded by Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy in 1995, and focused on some demo software they had created in grad school and a company vision of providing a way for people without much musical training or talent to experience the joy of playing and creating music. The founders believed that if people had the opportunity to create their own music, they would jump at the chance. Their software, which they eventually dubbed The Axe, provided basic music composition tutorials and allowed participants to use a joystick to improvise solos along to popular music tracks. They attempted to market their creation through an interface with Japanese karaoke machines, a demo package deal with Intel, and even an exhibition at Disney’s Epcot. And while the software always proved technically impressive, people generally expressed little initial interest in trying it out, or else it just didn’t seem like they were having much fun.
In 2000, Rigopulos and Egozy hit on a concept that would engage consumers, and Harmonix became a videogame company. The Axe software provided an improvisation program with no set goal, whereas most videogames are designed with a purpose and offer competition, which helps engage, direct, and motivate players. At the time, the market for music-based games had not fully developed, but especially in Japan, rhythm-based games, in which players tapped different combinations of buttons in time with a beat or a tune, were becoming increasingly more popular. Harmonix created two games, Frequency and Amplitude, in which players hit buttons along with a beat, unlocking tracks for different layers of instruments in a song. Neither of the games proved especially successful, however, as both were very complex and the expense of generating initial interest proved too high for their publisher, Sony, to continue funding them.
Harmonix finally found some success with its 2004 release of Karaoki Revolution, in which players used a microphone or headset peripheral to score points singing along to pop songs. It allowed gamers to play the role and be a part of the music. In 2005, a new but relatively successful peripheral videogame controller manufacturer named Red Octane contacted Harmonix to consider co-manufacturing gaming products, as they believed that the two companies had a similar philosophy for attracting gamers. This relationship led to the creation and launch of Guitar Hero.
Guitar Hero put players in the role of the lead guitarist in a rock band climbing its way to stardom. The game soundtrack, filled with remixes of classic American rock‘n’roll hits, appealed to a broader musical audience, and the guitar controller put the iconic instrument of American rock‘n’roll directly in player’s hands. The game was released in November 2005. When retailers set up in-store demo kiosks, game sales went through the roof. After the success of Guitar Hero came Rock Band, which expanded on the rock star concept of Guitar Hero by adding additional instruments, providing an even more exciting rock‘n’roll experience. Real rock stars began to pick it up, demonstrating its broad appeal. Music labels jumped on the bandwagon by allowing the licensing of actual songs rather than just composition rights. September 2008 saw the launch of Rock Band 2, which included songs by AC/DC and Bob Dylan. Gamers could download additional songs, like The Who’s greatest hits, onto their Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s at $1.99 per song, only a dollar more than purchasing a song from Apple’s iTunes music store. Licences for Rock Band were even secured for songs by the Beatles, which at the time had yet to be licensed to iTunes or other electronic media stores. The success of Rock Band and Rock Band 2 led to a variety of product line extensions. The Rock Band franchise has sold over 5 million units, and the hits just keep on coming.
The following questions relate to the case ‘Harmonix: Embrace Your Inner Rock Star’.
C1-1 What marketing management philosophy did Harmonix use at first and how did their philosophy change?
C1-2 How do you think Harmonix would describe its business?
C1-3 To whom was Harmonix’s product directed and how did it create a product that
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