Harmonix

Harmonix Music Systems (or simply Harmonix) is an American video game development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States. It is known for its many music video games.

Harmonix is perhaps best known as being the developer of Dance Central, Rock Band and Fantasia: Music Evolved, as well as being the original developer of the Guitar Hero series before development moved to Neversoft and Vicarious Visions.

History

Formation

Harmonix was founded in 1995 by Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy who met while attending MIT. Egozy was an electrical/computer engineer with an interest in music, while Rigopulos was a music composition major with an interest in programming; both met while working in the MIT Media Lab. After building a computer music generation system that could algorithmically create music on the fly, the two considered how one could use a joystick to control the system, and set up a demonstration of the unit for the Lab, which gained interest from others in the Lab. The two realized that after graduation that they probably couldn't pursue such ideas working at any existing companies, so they chose to start their own. The company was built on the premise that the experience of performing music could become accessible to those who would otherwise have trouble learning a traditional instrument.