The way you write off Miyamoto saddens me. You are dead to me, Luke Plunkett.

@PatMan33: The way you write off Miyamoto at the expense of Nintendo fanboys fills me with joy. You are alive to me, Luke Plunkett.

One of these days, I'm going to remember to read the Wikipedia article about Rock Band / Guitar Hero to learn how it came to be that they're two different games, and not one big money-owning conglomerate.

I'm pretty sure it'll be summarized in one sentence featuring the word "copyright" or something ridiculous like that.

The way you denigrate the man who created Mario and Zelda and celebrate the guys who created a *Stepmania clone* demonstrates that Kotaku resides in a bizarro universe. Those guys innovated what, exactly? Plastic peripherals? Ripping off DDR? I mean, I like the game but c'mon.

@PatMan33: its much easier to write him off on the internet seeing as how the internet is arguably dominated by the fanboys... it would be interesting to see where he would have been placed had there been a choice to select "Not Shigeru Miyamoto" next to the "Select Shigeru Miyamoto"

@PatMan33: No, he just wrote Miyamoto off as one of the greatest people of this year. And that whole retarded list in general.
I mean....RAIN(Yes, this rain)

Was voted the greatest person of the year. Obviously a stupid list.

Could me be more Anti-Nintendo Luke?

I'm not sure making a music game is innovative, considering it was done before...what? what's that you say? the over-priced plastic rod with 5 buttons on it makes it innovative? well who knew...

@108:

MTV ripped away Guitar Hero's developer (Harmonix) from its publisher (Activision) in order to create its own version; the only reason Rock Band's gotten recognition is because it uses a whole band, not just the guitar. If they had just done another guitar game, you never would have heard of Harmonix again.

Rock on dudes, rock on.

They should be rewarded.

If It wasn't for these games, I would've never listened to rock.

Now I'm proud to be listening to my dad's music.. hahah

That's awesome.
Congrats to the team.
Nice to see they're getting recognition for their stuff.

Oh, and obligatory "that's how you really do it Neversoft".

@Mikintosh: except they are Harmonix, so they would not have just done another guitar game anyway.

@Mikintosh: Actually, you've got that all wrong.
Harmonix developed Guitar Hero under Red Octane, and then MTV offered Harmonix the rights to their song catalog. Naturally, Harmonix wasn't going to pass that up.
So Red Octane sold the rights to the Highest bidder- Activision.
And...Because Rock Band intelligently innovated, we should have never heard of them again?
...What?

@NeoAkira:

*could you be

Damn a no edit function

Congrats Alex and Eran! A well deserved award indeed.

@Mikintosh: "Those guys innovated what, exactly? Plastic peripherals? Ripping off DDR?"

Tell me you were being ironic (Wii Fit allusion) and you're my New Friend.

In case you weren't being ironic: I am eating a delicious bowl of soup. Chickpea and garlic base, with diced red onions and chunky tofu and many other vegetables. It's my own recipe. I'm sure someone has made a soup like it before, though I can't find cans of it anywhere. I'm sure hundreds of thousands of people would love it. Though getting it out on the market and making millions of dollars with it in the profoundly frustrating modern business world is more of a challenge than I'm willing to face at this very moment.

@Mikintosh: "the only reason Rock Band's gotten recognition is because it uses a whole band, not just the guitar. If they had just done another guitar game, you never would have heard of Harmonix again."

Yes, though you have to admit, it's a pretty fuckin' great idea. Me personally, I hate music games; I prefer to attempt to play a real guitar very loudly with my drum-banging friend a couple times a week.

Still! Hell of a business move! The first Guitar Hero was a proof of concept -- that Americans The World Over could love Japanese Guitar Freaks-style rhythm games. The second one got real songs, not just shitty covers. Et cetera.

What strikes me most is not that Guitar Hero "ripped off" Guitar Freaks -- it's that Guitar Freaks never bothered to come to America, despite the stealthily growing DDR fanbase. Then again, Konami's marketing as it exists outside Kojima P has been absolute shit pretty much forever.

Japanese game companies, for the longest time, have shunned the idea that Japanese people might play videogames together, at home. Witness Sony Japan scoffing at the potential EyeToy. Their argument was always "Japanese people are different from foreigners". Someone like Kojima was able to achieve greater success overseas than at home; why didn't the BeatMania marketers, with their full range of music games, consider taking the initiative, putting together the pieces of the puzzle, and releasing a Rock-Band-game in America?

So yeah, cheers to these guys for having the crazy fortitude to go through and get this thing out on the street. They deserve to be in TIME at least as much as Miyamoto does.

Not even going to look over this before posting it!

Here's the thing about Harmonix, those guys fucking rule. Big ups to them.

I love Miyamoto just for his goofy smile he puts on for the cameras. He's so cute, I almost want to pet him.But saying Guitar Hero "saved classic rock for generations to come" is a bit too much. Maybe the first one, yeah. From Guitar Hero 2 and on it was all about joke songs from internet cartoons and emocore. Because that's what the kids like these days, right?

It's good to see them getting the recognition they deserve.

No love for Kasson Crooker?

:<

@Palladium: Actually, you have that wrong. Red Octane was acquired by Activision, and Harmonix was acquired by MTV Games. So there was a split between two publishers, but Activision got rights to the Guitar Hero franchise since they bought the previous publisher.

Sometimes I wonder just exactly what it is about Kotaku that makes it so unpleasant to read sometimes. This post just about sums it up.

The developers of Rock Band expanded slightly upon the Guitar Hero formula. They took Guitar Hero, Singstar, and the generic drumming game that's been appearing in every rhythm game for years, and combined them. What a shocker: that the same formula they took a chance on for Guitar Hero (that licensed music and silly peripherals would turn a niche game into a mainstream game) would work if they charged even more for it.

Indeed, that's innovation. Or you could try something totally different, like Miyamoto did with Wii Fit, and actually risk all the internet nerdcore trashing it without ever trying anything like it. But why should anyone reward actual experimentation? "Innovation" should be defined as doing the exact same thing you've been doing, and getting it to not suck.

"saving "classic rock for generations to come"

More like creating a bunch of bandwagoners.

@108:
You're right, why didn't Guitar Freaks make it over here?

It is a mystery.

@sxp151, the happy-headed nose: Ever heard of the Steam Engine Time theory? The gist is that once an idea's time has come, there's always going to be more than one person working on it. James Watt gets the credit for inventing the steam engine, but in reality he just popularised it with his particular design - many others were also making steam engines at the time.

Is Watt's credit undeserved just because it built on the prior work of others? No, because it was still revolutionary in what his version of it did for the world. In the same way, Harmonix can deservedly take the credit for truly popularising rhythm games with their special brand of them.

The real list is soooo much better. It actually separates the people into different categories and is much more objective in each!

@sxp151, the happy-headed nose: The developers of Rock Band, Harmonix, also developed Guitar Hero. They're largely being honoured here for making Guitar Hero.

If you somehow think there was no innovation or risk with Guitar Hero, think back on how many expensive custom-peripheral games have been million sellers in the US market. Singstar was a proven success over here in Europe but that thing just comes with a free crappy mic; DDR and ITG are primarily arcade games with cheap home ports that come with £5 soft mats.

Harmonix didn't rip off DDR, they ripped off Guitar Freaks. If you're going to run lame causation smack at least get it right.

@ all the lamos who are knocking off the Harmonix people, just remember that this is for a year in review for 2007. Wii fit isn't even out in most areas of the world yet...

Really, the list and write-ups were done mostly by peers. Of course academic integrity and review are foreign concepts to quite a few of you.

Rock Band: not just a game, an instrument of history.

Great game? Or greatest game?

It's one of those things where it's cool that Rock Band is exposing people to all kinds of classic songs, but it's also disappointing that it takes a video game for this to happen.

Because lord knows that music knowledge was something you used to be able to pull from a radio or certain television network (which ironically enough is one of the companies invested in this game)

I'm still waiting for MTV to spin the success of Rock Band into an excuse to make a "MTV4" which will feature 24-hour classic music...for about a month. At which point it will be taken over by Real World reruns and random episodes of Next.

@TRT-X: sure, MTV and the various homogenized radio stations out there dropped the ball, but the internet picked it up and went 98 yards for the TD. it's now easier to expose yourself to new music, old music, of any genre, than it EVER was.

rock band isn't some sort of music savior, if this is the only way people got exposed to some of the all time greats, well, that's because those people are....well, that much is up to the reader to decide. but thanks to harmonix for exposing that group to true greatness.

@Mikintosh: Stepmania clone? Ripping off DDR? Something is wrong with you. Go get your facts straight before post on the internet ever again.

[en.wikipedia.org]
[en.wikipedia.org]

Those came BEFORE Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

I have a pretty big issue with people deciding that Guitar Hero was innovative with Guitar Freaks, oh I dunno, existing for quite some time. It's like when people say GH was the first music game. *shudder*

@RPGr: Academic integrity? Peer review?

You do realize you're not talking about "Duke Journal of Influential People" here, right? You're talking about Time magazine. The magazine whose editors chose "You" as person of the year a couple years ago.

No offense if you're one of them, but they're fucking morons.

@freakout:
Well said.