Guitar Hero, an overnight success, 10 years in the making

He misses one of the biggest underlying factors to Guitar Hero's sharp takeoff - Konami paved the road ahead for them. Arguably, Harmonix's strength was "merely" in westernizing a concept that the Guitarfreaks franchise had already established.

The fact that Harmonix had more insight than Konami, and focused on home console development, certainly didn't hurt, but as a gamer, I should note that even Rock Band was long since beaten to the punch by the inclusion of DrumMania to Konami's arcade cabinet lineup.