MTV Games (defunct)

About

MTV Games was a publishing division of MTV Networks, owned by Viacom. Known for its music television network, the division was established to publish games where the gameplay revolves around playing music. To that goal the company acquired the development studio Harmonix Music Systems in September 2006.

Under the MTV umbrella Harmonix established the Rock Band series, competing directly with Activision's Guitar Hero franchise Harmonix previously established. Rock Band expanded the guitar-playing game to a band experience, incorporating a microphone and drums as additional peripherals. Every release was also supported by a large range of DLC song packs.

The music games business took a sharp dive in sales in 2010 and in November 2010 Viacom announced to sell Harmonix. The studio largely regained its independent status in December. MTV Games' last release was Dance Central for Microsoft's Kinect peripheral in November 2010. Having sold its main development studio, the US MTV Games division along with the European division MTV Games International (established in May 2010) were confirmed to have been closed in February 2011.