Rock Band 3 and Music Games: More Expensive Than Harmonix

Raise your hand if a room in your house contains a plastic instrument.  My hand is up.  And since I can’t tell if anybody reading this is raising their hand or not, I’m just going to assume a bunch of you are because it helps my point.  It’s the internet, this is considered research.  So this article started in my head as a review of Rock Band 3, which it still sort of is.  The more I thought about it though the more I realized that one basically has to take music games as a whole, at least Guitar Hero and Rock Band anyway.  Why were they so popular?  Why are sales numbers dwindling now?  How the hell did Harmonix, the main force behind creating the genre via Guitar Hero, get sold for FIFTY DOLLARS?  That is less than I paid for Rock Band 3!