It’s no secret that the Viacom-owned company, MTV Networks, has had some focus in the game industry, most noticeably since the acquisition of Harmonix, the developer of Guitar Hero and, coming soon, Rock Band. They’ve even taken ownership of GameTrailers, Xfire, and Atom Entertainment.
Bursting wide the not-so-secretive floodgates, Reuters discussed the future of MTV and their acquisitions. MTV Chairman Judy McGrath had this to say: “As we take our brands narrow and deep to serve our targeted, niche audiences, we’re putting well over $500 million behind building our games business across all of the brands in our portfolio.” She further added that she’d “like to see more game applications on some of our current big brands across the music group.”
However, some analysts believe this to be a bold and “crazy” move for media companies to try and bring videogame development in house, such as Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities. “They act like anyone can do this. The fact is not everyone can,” referring to console gaming development. But MTV will be hard to discount with major acquisitions such as Harmonix. The development doesn’t need to be “in house” when you have a partner [Harmonix] with previous success at your back.
