Plastic Fantastic

Harmonix pairs up with Hasbro to reinvent the music game peripheral

- 

The industry’s concerted attempts to revive plastic-peripheral-based music games in 2015 through Guitar Hero Live and Rock Band 4 were, in commercial terms at least, failures. The latter case, in particular, proved almost fatal for publisher Mad Catz, which shouldered the major manufacturing risks associated with the plastic instruments used for Harmonix’s game. The peripheral maker was forced to lay off almost 40 per cent of its staff following poor sales. For that reason, Hasbro’s partnership with the storied US music-game company on DropMix, which allows player to mash up songs using collectible cards played onto a chunky plastic mixing table, seems at once courageous and reckless.

The starter pack, which will retail for a plucky $99.99, contains the two-foot long board (which, at one end, contains a slot into which you place your phone or tablet), a free download of the game app and a selection of 60 collectible cards. Each card corresponds to a different hit song, split across four genres: pop, rock, electronic and hip-hop. Place a card, and an isolated channel of music from the original track begins to play, depending on whereabouts on the board it’s played. A Tribe Called Quest card laid onto the blue card slot, for example, will produce the song’s isolated drum track. Place the card on the yellow slot, by contrast, and you’ll hear just the vocal line.