Harmonix’s Fuser wants to make you a DJ… but only up to a point

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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