David Haddad taking over Guitar Hero after Dan Rosensweig departs

After less than a year on the job, Ex-Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig is leaving his position as President and CEO of Guitar Hero to "pursue other career opportunities." Guitar Hero COO David Haddad takes his place.

Activision announced today that President and Chief Executive Officer Dan Rosensweig has left the company and that Chief Operating Officer David Haddad is taking his place as head of the Guitar Hero unit.

Rosensweig became President and CEO of Guitar Hero developer RedOctane in March 2009, replacing co-founder Kai Huang. During Rosensweig's time with Activision, Guitar Hero 5, Guitar Hero: Metallica, Guitar Hero: Van Halen, DJ Hero, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, Guitar Hero On Tour: Modern Hits, Band Hero, Rock Band: The Beatles, and Lego Rock Band were all produced by the company.

Some of you may recall Rosensweig boasted back in September that Guitar Hero 5 was beating The Beatles: Rock Band in sales, and then turned out to be wrong when NPD Group published its sales report for that month. Despite that hiccup, Rosensweig wasn't fired from his position at Activision over bad performance reviews or anything like that. Official Activision blogger Dan Amrich says he left the company willingly to become CEO at Chegg.com.

Haddad, meanwhile, comes to the top of the Guitar Hero brand with plenty of experience under his belt. Before joining Activision as COO on Guitar Hero, he was COO at Vivendi Games' Sierra Online division.

Here's the official statement included in the press release:

"We would like to thank Dan for his contributions to the Guitar Hero business," stated Mike Griffith. "We widened our leadership in the music gaming genre in 2009. And now, as we enter 2010, David Haddad, with his broad consumer product and digital/online experience, is the right leader to drive our agenda to improve profitability."

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Silent Hill producer joins Grasshopper Manufacture; will create music for Suda 51-Mikami project

Akira Yamaoka, best known as soundtrack composer for the Silent Hill series, is joining Suda51's Grasshopper Manufacture, with plans to create the soundtrack for the project Suda and Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami are making for EA.

There aren't very many video game projects that can be considered the equivalent of an album from a supergroup, but the upcoming collaboration between Akira Yamaoka, Goichi Suda, and Shinji Mikami is very close to that level of talent. When you've got the Silent Hill composer working alongside the creators of No More Heroes and Resident Evil, it seems like a recipe for success. The recipe added its latest ingredient--Mr. Yamaoka--when it was announced that he would join the ranks of Grasshopper Manufacture, according to Famitsu (via 1UP). While Yamaoka will solely focus on creating music for his upcoming Grasshopper projects, he stated that he'd like to utilize his "total sum of experience" in the future.

Yamaoka has been a driving force in the success of the Silent Hill series, creating the atmospheric music permeating the titles since the first game and serving as the producer for Silent Hill 3 and 4. He left Konami in 2009 after over 15 years with the company. According to the Famitsu article, Suda has hoped to work with Yamaoka ever since the first time he observed Silent Hill 2.

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Indie dev causes a stir with "games are not art" statements

At the Art History of Games conference this week, indie developer Tale of Tales made several bold statements about games not being art. Furthermore, "video games are overwhelmingly a waste of time."

Independent developer Tale of Tales caused a stir at the Art History of Games conference this week in Atlanta, GA by saying that games are not art and largely a huge waste of time.

Known for their unconventional games like The Path and the recently-released Fatale, Tale of Tales developers Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey were quoted by Gamasutra as saying that "games are not art," and "Beside a few noble attempts, video games are overwhelmingly a waste of time."

Above: A portion of Fatale, a game based on the biblical story of Salome.

This might sound pretentious coming from a studio whose games are often cited as proof that games can be art; but the key distinction Samyn and Auriea seem to make is that the nature of "games" is incompatible with art. "Games," they said, evolved from a biological need for play. Thanks to the rules that grew up around them, we now have what the developers believe to be a failure to evolve in video game design. Also, they said art is dead and that it's been co-opted by capitalism and restrictive government.

These bold statements preceded an equally bold proclamation that Tale of Tales plans make it all better by continuing to reject conventional game design and their "stupid rules." Sadly, they didn't announce any new upcoming titles -- but you can check out their iPhone app, Vanitas, which debuted at the Art History of Games conference as a commissioned work.

Source:
The Art History... Of Games? Games As Art May Be A Lost Cause [Gamasutra]

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Activision confirms studio layoffs, Luxoflux closed UPDATED

Studio layoffs should come as no surprise after Activision announced plans to cut production on games (especially Guitar Hero) and focus on a few core franchises. It was surprising to hear that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen developer Luxoflux was totally axed, though.

Even though Luxoflux isn't working on the new Transformers: War for Cybertron game Activision mentioned in its earnings call, it still seemed like the kind of studio Activision would leverage to work on its move tie-in games (e.g. Shrek). However, official Activision blogger Dan Amrich confirmed yesterday that the studio is closed for good and Guitar Hero developer Neversoft suffered staff cuts along with Prototype developer Radical Entertainment.

Here's the official company statement:

"Activision Publishing continually evaluates its resources to ensure that they are properly matched against its product slate and strategic goals. In 2010, the company's SKU count will be smaller than in 2009 driven in part, by a decrease in the number of music-based games we will be releasing. As we discussed on our earnings conference call yesterday, we are directing our resources against the largest and most profitable business segments, and as part of this initiative, we are realigning our resources to better reflect our slate and the market opportunities. At the same time, we are increasing our digital/online capabilities as we expect that digital/online will continue to become a more meaningful part of our business model in the years ahead."

UPDATE: In another statement issued today, Activision says Underground Studios is also closing up shop. RedOctane, meanwhile, is being relocated to Santa Monica under newly-promoted David Haddad.

Source:
Layoffs [One of Swords]

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Lord British's clean slate becomes social networking venture

Apparently undaunted by massive multiplayer online game Tabula Rasa's demise, game developer Richard Garriott gets back into the scene with a new social networking venture called Portalarium.

According to a press release sent out just ahead of the 2010 DICE Summit where Garriott is a panelist, Portalarium "has a broad-based, open-social mission that will also see it expanding into content that includes open learning, open health, open science/environment, open government and much more, all wrapped in a connective virtual world in the online social networking space." For now, though, it's a social game publishing house.

It's first product, Sweet @$! Poker, is available on Facebook now. More casino games are in the works and CenterPort, the virtual world on which Garriott's venture is founded, will go live later this year.

GamePro reporter Dave Rudden has an interview with Garriott at DICE this week where we're sure he'll tell us all about the new venture and maybe reveal more games for the service. Keep an eye on our 2010 DICE Summit coverage for details.

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Tomonobu Itagaki announces Tecmo settlement

The ex-Team Ninja developer behind Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive settles his dispute over unpaid bonuses with former employer, Tecmo. He also teases an announcement of his current project.

The trouble began in June 2008 when Itagaki announced he was leaving Tecmo and suing them for failure to pay promised bonuses on completed projects. He also filed suit against Tecmo president Yoshimi Yasuda, "for such unlawful acts as unreasonable and disingenuous statements made towards me, claiming damages in total of 148 million yen."

Itagaki's statement released via Famitsu today (and translated by blog Andriasang) says that a reconciliation has been reached, but does not disclose the conditions of the settlement. At the tail end of the announcement, Itagaki says he "cannot wait" to tell his fans about the project he's been working on post-Tecmo.

Source:
板垣伴信氏とテクモの訴訟で和解が成立 [Famitsu via Andriasang]

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Website lightzz.com claims credit for Major Nelson account hack UPDATE

Larry Hryb, known to most as Microsoft's Major Nelson, appears to have a hacked Xbox Live account. Lewd messages in his account info fields and a YouTube video apparently walking through the steps to hack his account showed up online today.

Kotaku spotted the weirdness on Hryb's account not too long ago. They also report that the supposed hacker is offering to hack other Xbox Live accounts for $60.

Chances are, Major Nelson isn't aware of the issue yet as we only just got back from PAX East, ourselves. Nevertheless, we've put in a request for comment with Major Nelson and are keeping an eye on our Xbox Live account just in case anybody has it in for us and $60 to put toward the cause of printing profanity in our Name or Location fields.

Here's the video walkthrough:

UPDATE: Microsoft confirmed to us that the account had been compromised in "a very specific and very targeted [attack] to Major Nelson's account." They regained control of the account this morning and the above video was pulled from YouTube. The alleged hacker still has the video up on his site along with an angry message that reads "I DARE YOU FILE COMPLAINTS ON ME BANNED ME IF U CAN MY MAIN."

Source:
Xbox Live Director's Account Hacked! (Are You Next?) [Kotaku]

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