Harmonix to announce THE other project at GDC 08?

Through the years, Harmonix Music Systems) Independent Video Game Developer”>Harmonix has established itself as one of the main proponents of the rhythm-based genre of today’s video game titles. After conquering the next-gen consoles, one has to wonder what other things are up the company’s sleeves.

Well, the published session list for Game Developers Conference 2008 might give us a clue. According to the official site of GDC 2008, Harmonix will hold a session titled “Your Music Is the Game: Designing the OTHER Project at Harmonix” with lead designer Chris Foster as the designated speaker.

Some interesting points of the planned session include:

• Their new title faced unique challenges: beats would not be authored by tech-savvy musicians, but would instead be algorithmically generated, and the game would lack the dedicated peripherals that were critical to the success of the Guitar Hero series
• Special attention is devoted to: the development of procedural gameplay algorithms; unique input mechanics; and triaging unexpected changes in scope and schedule.

We highlighted one of the above statements for a reason. We are not certain if you are aware of this, but Harmonix applied for a trademark back in 2002 for Beat Boy. Quite interestingly, the trademark had the description of “an electronic video game software for portable listening devices”.

What do you think guys? This could fit well with the Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, and other “next-gen” mobile phones. We guess we’ll never know for certain until GDC kicks off on February 18. We hope an official announcement will come after that.

Through the years, Harmonix Music Systems) Independent Video Game Developer”>Harmonix has established itself as one of the main proponents of the rhythm-based genre of today’s video game titles. After conquering the next-gen consoles, one has to wonder what other things are up the company’s sleeves.

Well, the published session list for Game Developers Conference 2008 might give us a clue. According to the official site of GDC 2008, Harmonix will hold a session titled “Your Music Is the Game: Designing the OTHER Project at Harmonix” with lead designer Chris Foster as the designated speaker.

Some interesting points of the planned session include:

• Their new title faced unique challenges: beats would not be authored by tech-savvy musicians, but would instead be algorithmically generated, and the game would lack the dedicated peripherals that were critical to the success of the Guitar Hero series
• Special attention is devoted to: the development of procedural gameplay algorithms; unique input mechanics; and triaging unexpected changes in scope and schedule.

We highlighted one of the above statements for a reason. We are not certain if you are aware of this, but Harmonix applied for a trademark back in 2002 for Beat Boy. Quite interestingly, the trademark had the description of “an electronic video game software for portable listening devices”.

What do you think guys? This could fit well with the Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, and other “next-gen” mobile phones. We guess we’ll never know for certain until GDC kicks off on February 18. We hope an official announcement will come after that.