Posts Tagged ‘awards’

One of my favorite business publications,Fast Company, announced their list of the Top 10 Innovative Companies by Industry this week, and guess who landed on it?  Joining the likes of industry heavy weights Apple, Microsoft, Infinity Ward, and Rockstar Games, Harmonix landed on the list at a healthy #7.

According to Fast Company…

With The Beatles: Rock Band, the creators of the musical video-game genre reached what could be considered its artistic pinnacle: great gameplay, amazing songs, and a focus on music history. The Beatles’ sales totaled 1.7 million units worldwide in 2009, relatively strong given the overall weakness in the music-video-game genre.

Congrats, Harmonix!

Bleep Bloop, an offshoot of College Humor that reviews and discusses video games, sat down with Andy Battaglia from the A.V. Club, to talk a little about their winner for game of the year, the Beatles: Rock Band.  They made an excellent point that I really never thought that much about until now, is that sure Modern Warfare 2 and Uncharted 2 are amazing games now, but only a few years down the road, they’ll be surpassed by the next iteration of their genre.  The Beatles: Rock Band is based on the music of the Beatles, who haven’t had a new album since the end of the ’60s!  This game isn’t going anywhere for a long time, and despite a few initial reservations they had when the game was first announced, once they were able to play it, their nerves were immediately put at ease, based on the intense amount of detail put into the game by Harmonix.

Check out the full video from them below, which intersperses their discussion with clips of the College Humor staff playing the game (with the sound removed).

Gaming industry blog Gamasutra.com today announced their Top 5 Game Developers of 2009.  Our personal favorite, Harmonix, was fortunate enought to find a place on this list!  The brief write-up extolls Harmonix for making a brilliant and unique band-centric game that was able to impress and innovate among a field of less impressive entries.  The boys and girls of Harmonix find themselves in good company among over developers Naughty Dog (Uncharted 2), Rocksteady Studios (Batman: Arkham Asylum), Runic Games (Torchlight), and Valve Software (Left 4 Dead 2).  Congrats to the fine folks over at Harmonix!

The nominees for this year’s Spike Video Game Awards have been announced, and you can help decide the winner’s by participating in the vote.  The Beatles: Rock Band is up for two awards: Best Music Game and Best Soundtrack.  For Best Music Game, I’m sorry, but Harmonix helped create this category with the original Guitar Hero, so even if you don’t like the Beatles, you owe it to vote for the game.  And for Best Soundtrack… look… I like heavy metal music. I was born in the late ’70s and raised in the early ’80s.  I freaked out when Tim Schafer read off the track listing for Brutal Legend (while simultaneously solving a Rubik’s Cube), but my loyalty lies with Rock Band.  Sorry, Brutal Legend.

So click the links I added above and get voting!

Rock Band and Rock Band 2 are nominated for multiple awards at the 27th annual Golden Joystick Awards.  The categories the games have been nominated for are included below.  Click on the link at the bottom to cast your votes!

• Family Game of the Year
• Multiplayer Game of the Year
• Nintendo Game of the Year
• PlayStation Game of the Year
• Soundtrack of the Year (this seems like a given)
• The Ultimate Game of the Year
• XBox Game of the Year

VOTE!