Dance Hero (Not John Travolta)

[Zombie_King]

MTV/Harmonix's Rock Band tried to topple the reign of Konami's Guitar Hero series, and now Activision-Blizzard is putting up contender for the Dance Dance Revolution series, also owned by Konami.

This week, the Activision Blizzard subsidiary filed an application to trademark the name "Dance Hero" with the US Patent and Trademark Office. If granted, the trademark would give Activision rights to the name for "computer game software," "interactive video game programs," "computer game discs," "downloadable computer game software," and other related categories.

The very name Dance Hero evokes images of a title along the lines of DDR or EA's more recent Boogie. However, just because Activision has registered the name, doesn't mean a game is definitely in the offing. In January 2007, Activision trademarked "Guitar Villain" and "Drum Villain", with no sign of a game bearing either handle having yet surfaced. This past February, it locked down rights to the title "DJ Hero" without announcing a new product, although rumors of a turntable-based mash-up game bearing the name are beginning to bubble up.

[link]http://www.gamespot.com/news/6198257.html?tag=result;title;0[/link]

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Maybe they're just trying to systematically stop these crappy rythmn games from being made/

 

[VitusPrime]

Maybe they're just trying to systematically stop these crappy rythmn games from being made/

the thing is thats probably the reason why

 

[Decemius]

I doubt this is real.

 

[Theo Samaritan]

If this is real I have to point out a couple of major flaws with the plan.

1: The last company to release a dance game that made more money than Konami (Roxor, developers of In The Groove [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Groove_(series)], a game also published by now-famous Red Octane) got sued from breach of intellectual property rights. This was mainly due to In The Groove machines making almost triple the money DDR machines made when in the same location.

2: Nobody serious plays 4-pad dance games anymore. Mainly due to the fact that alot of the developers from Roxor worked on the new project, everybody has gone to Pump It Up Pro [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_It_Up_Pro], which is five pads (one in each corner, one center).

I must also point out that Guitar Hero had nothing to do with Konami, and Konami was planning to sue them for ripping off Guitar Freaks [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Freaks] (which has been around for almost ten years now) but decided instead to sue the makers of Rockband, because they actually manage to not only rip off Guitar Freaks but also DrumMania [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DrumMania] in one product.

DOH!

This message also goes out to those of you who thought that Guitar Hero was a new idea. I apologise humbly for the extensive use of wikipedia.

EDIT: Also DJ Hero? That stinks of BeatMania [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatmania] to me. I may be bitter and I know none of them are confirmed but...