Recently Masaya Matsuura, the creator of the playstation classics Vib Ribbon and parappa the rappa, held a talk about the future of music games. In his talk, he commented on the heavy use of licensed music in todays music games, saying that “The recent success of music games in the West is often based on licensed music. We need to move beyond this.”

Personally I feel this is a two edged sword. On one side, creating more unique integrated music games and perhaps evolving from a “simon says”-gamplay, will require a different approach than just mapping out a songs note-pattern and expecting the user to perform given actions at given times. Involving musicians from the get-go, like Matsuura-san talks about, might give waves to new creative visions, but I feel you’d have to have a plan, an idea at base. Good gameplay isn’t necessarily made in jam-sessions. But good ideas can become great ideas during one.

However, licensed music sells games. I think few would argue that Guitar Hero would not have been the mainstream success it has become, if it had consisted of only unknown indie-bands.

I think that involving musicians early, can be really good when you want to try out a new exciting concept, but it’s the new exciting concepts that’s ever eluding us that really is the obstacle for new innovation in music games.

And as we all know, new and exciting concepts does not grow on trees.

So what innovations in music games lies ahead of us?

Well, one thing is for certain, with all the momentum they have at the moment, we’ll be sure to see many different ideas tried out in the next couple of years. With rockband and guitar hero invading our living room with peripheral galore, will the next innovation be a less intrusive one, or “rockband on the stage:rock concert” with cardboard marshall walls, light buckets and smoke machines?