Enlarge / You can't have Coachella this summer, but you can fake like a Coachella main-stage DJ "this fall" with Harmonix's Fuser. (credit: Harmonix)
Late last decade, plastic guitars and motion sensors vanished from the console gaming landscape—and, coincidentally, the same goes for Harmonix. For years, the pioneering music-gaming developer has struggled to break out with a mainstream hit anywhere near the scale of Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or Dance Central.
The company's last new-series stab, 2018's DropMix, was a complicated gamble, as it required players to buy a bulky peripheral and a series of physical playing cards. DropMix had its aficionados, but for whatever reason—a smartphone requirement, or a "buy more cards to get more songs" gimmick—the collaboration with toymaker Hasbro didn't pan out.
Harmonix is clearly still bullish on DropMix's music-engineering trickery, which revolves around letting players splice and combine existing songs' separate elements (vocals, guitars, drums) and become "mash-up" DJs. This year, the developer is trying again with Fuser, a version made specifically for consoles and PC. Thanks to Harmonix, we were able to go hands-on with the game's latest preview build ahead of its launch "this fall," and our existing controllers sufficed—no additional hardware or cards are required. That's good news, but does that mean Fuser is poised to succeed where DropMix failed?
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