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Yesterday, I spoke with former Microsoft vice president Ed Fries shortly before his session at The Ayzenberg Group's [A] List Summit. I already posted his assessment on how the "big three" console companies are faring, but I wanted to share this excellent story about how Fries was indirectly responsible for Guitar Hero. Apparently Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos pitched Microsoft on the game that would become Frequency. Fries turned it down and offered some extremely valuable advice. Fries told me:
"I ran into Alex Rigopulos a few years ago and he was joking with me about when we passed on his title FreQ, which was before Guitar Hero and Rock Band. He said, 'I don't know if you remember, but you met with me and turned us down. You said that nobody would ever buy a music-rhythm game that doesn't have a custom piece of hardware attached to it. So I took your word and did this Guitar Hero thing and it worked out great!' [laughs]
I said, 'Well thanks for that. Thanks for giving me some amount of credit for that. I wish we had actually signed you and done it.' [laughs] Obviously, those games were enormous for the business."
Frequency and Amplitude were great games, but they didn't set the world on fire in terms of sales, so I can understand why Fries turned Rigopulos down at the time. While nobody could have predicted the huge boom in music games at that time, I'm sure this is one of Microsoft's big "What if?" scenarios. It's totally cool that Fries can laugh about it in retrospect.
Microsoft having Guitar Hero as a first-party exclusive...how crazy would that have been?
Comments
Displaying 1–11 of 11
esm86ou
Hmmm...seems like u were just looking for something to post...
NakedSnake14
It doesn't matter anyway, because they really should stop making all these guitar hero games year after year. I am tired of all these freaking developers making a "better version" of a game every year. Rock Band 2 FTW.
ROYALHYSTERIA55
MS FTW!
ZombiekingX
All systems should have passed on those "things". They're insults to video games.
Xero_Wing
tomorrow at Ed Fries house
Ed: Hello?
Bill: yea ed its Bill Gates
Ed: Oh wow hows retirment
Bill: actualy funny you should ask i jus came out of retirement for the day to tell you. your fired HOW COULD YOU PASS ON HARMONIX!
ed: well sir...
Bill: ...AND NOT ONLY THAT BUT YOU GAVE THEM THE IDEA FOR GUITAR HERO DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THAT GAMES MADE?
ed: yea but sir
CLICK
ed: (comment redacted)
DreamingDarklyRobin
Well, it certainly isn't anything new to this industry, people's ideas being turned down with better ones arising later on.
mangazo15
that could still happen with activision dissing Sony. Man i just hope activision grows some balls and just stops supporting for the PS3, i mean really who can blame them the PS3 barely sales.
mangazo15
Ofcourse I am, xbox 360 = one of the best consoles to date and GH = one of the best music rythm games out there.
EntropyMu
Would Guitar Hero have taken off on the X-box? It built up pretty slowly, and the PS2 install base was pretty huge.
mangazo15 ShowHide(4 Replies)
that could still happen with activision dissing Sony. Man i just hope activision does grow some balls and just stops supporting for the PS3, i mean really who can blame them the PS3 barely sales.
nowhere2hide139
that would suck. although i play rock band on my 360, i know so many other people who don't play this game on a 360 and we cant share the same experiences
Displaying 1–11 of 11
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