Music games "not a fad" - RedOctane
Company co-founder is confident there much more to come from the genre
RedOctane co-founder Kai Huang is adamant that music games are "not a fad" and that there is a lot more mileage in the genre left to explore.
Speaking at this year's MI6 marketing conference in San Francisco he stated his belief that what the company has achieved so far is just "the beginning of a huge category."
He explained that the company views music games as a grid of genres and instruments - so far, the company has kept to rock, and at first it was just a guitar; now there is an entire band. If you think of what is potentially available, he reasoned, there is a lot of life left in the category.
The next genre RedOctane is tackling is hip hop, which Huang believes will expand the audience for music game. Over 50 per cent of the people interested in DJ Hero have never bought a music game, he claimed, adding that not only will the game bring new audiences into the music game category, but it will also expose new audiences to that style of music.
Huang also revealed that one of the jokes between him and his brother Charles at RedOctane is a new title: Accordion Hero. The music genre is so compelling that the two have bet in the past they could get game players to start listening to accordion music if only there were a Hero game exposing them to the genre - such is the power of music videogames.