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Music gaming update: Duolingo buys NextBeat as RedOctane returns

Duolingo music

Excitement around music games tends to come in cycles. Could we be set for another one in 2025? A couple of announcements today have potential.

First, language-learning firm Duolingo is deepening its involvement with music through the acquisition of NextBeat. That’s the startup that was spun out of existing firm Space Ape Games – maker of the popular Beatstar mobile game – earlier this year. That’s barely eight months from launch to exit.

“With this move, Duolingo is investing in making its music course as fun and joyful as the best mobile games in the market,” is how Duolingo explained the rationale for buying NextBeat. Or, as the announcement specifies: the team behind NextBeat.

“This is a strategic bet on talent. The NextBeat team brings deep mobile gaming and music industry expertise, which will make our music course and the entire Duolingo platform more delightful, immersive, and effective,” said Duolingo chief business officer Bob Meese.

Duolingo launched its music-education course in 2023, teaching music theory with an on-screen piano. Last August it added hits from Sony Music via a licensing deal, then announced plans for a miniature physical keyboard that could be used with the course.

The company says that “millions” of people have used Duolingo Music since its launch, so buying NextBeat signifies ambitions to do even more with this part of Duolingo’s business.

“We’re going to experiment. We could do guitar, we could do voice, we could do rhythm, so you will see more, different music experiences coming out of us,” Meese told Bloomberg.

“We were very interested in getting out of the games vertical and into education and other apps … and we got talking to Duolingo and we just realised over the course of the conversation that there’s a much better platform for us to have impact with their 47.7 million DAUs,” NextBeat CEO Simon Hade told PocketGamer·biz, meanwhile.

Today’s second piece of music-gaming news is a throwback: the return of RedOctane Games. Back in the day, this was the publisher of the first Guitar Hero console games, acquired in 2006 by games giant Activision, but later closed down in 2010.

The new RedOctane includes some of the original team members, with original founders Charles and Kai Huang sitting on its advisory board. The company says it is “focused solely on advancing the rhythm game genre” with its debut game to be announced later this year.

Hardware will be included, as in the past. “We’re not just making games, we’re creating connected rhythm experiences that unite cutting-edge controllers, genre-defining titles, and a thriving community, all moving to the same beat,” is how the company described its plans.

So, we have NextBeat working on whatever’s next for Duolingo’s music course, and RedOctane getting its gang back together for more music-rhythm games (and hardware).

And don’t forget that the developer it worked with on those early Guitar Hero games, Harmonix, is now part of Epic Games working on its Fortnite Festival mode and other music features. This latest cycle for music gaming is looking very promising.

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