
Harmonix transitioned to Mad Catz in 2010 for the publication and instrumentation controller manufacture. In 2009, due to saturation of the rhythm game market, sales of both Guitar Hero and Rock Band dropped Harmonix's investors were able to buy the company from Viacom and making Harmonix an independent company, giving them more flexibility in options for the series. Harmonix had worked with Red Octane for the Guitar Hero series first released in 2005 when Red Octane was acquired by Activision to continue Guitar Hero in 2007, MTV Games, a division of Viacom at the time, acquired Harmonix to expand the concept to Rock Band, and served as the game's publisher and manufacturer for the instrument controllers, with distribution handled by Electronic Arts.

The series has featured numerous game modes, and supports both local and online multiplayer modes where up to four players in most modes can perform together. Players are scored for successfully-hit notes, while may fail a song if they miss too many notes. Certain games support the use of "Pro" instruments that require special controllers that more closely mimic the playing of real instruments, providing a higher challenge to players. Based on their previous development work from the Guitar Hero series, the main Rock Band games has players use game controllers modeled after musical instruments and microphones to perform the lead guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, drums and vocal parts of numerous licensed songs across a wide range of genres though mostly focusing on rock music by matching scrolling musical notes patterns shown on screen.



Rock Band is a series of rhythm games developed by Harmonix, principally for home video game consoles. Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4, PSP, Wii, Nintendo DS, iOS
