Gamers went nuts for Guitar Hero’s new and intuitive interactivity. So did the major console manufacturers, who continue to glom on to its allure for nontraditional gamers. “It’s an experience people can understand and not get intimidated by,” says John Rodman, senior product manager of Microsoft’s Xbox 360. “A music game like Guitar Hero is the perfect entry point for an expanded audience,” says George Harrison, senior vice president of marketing and corporate communication at Nintendo. Or, as Toffler puts it, “Any knucklehead in his basement can play guitar in the game.”

Real bands were jazzed too. After My Chemical Romance first tried the game before a show, band members immediately called their manager, as drummer Bob Bryar recalls, and said, “Why aren’t we in this game? It rules!” (They got their wish in Guitar Hero II.)

“This is the new MTV,” Rigopulos says.

Harmonix’s offices, a stone’s throw from M.I.T., have all the trappings of a typical videogame company. There are stacks of soda cans and coffee drinks by the magnet-covered fridge, dreadlocked and tattooed coders and artists slurping down instant noodles, and framed photos on the wall that show company geeks dressed up like Kiss.

But Rigopulos and Egozy, as they kick back in a corner office, say they see themselves differently. “We’re not a game publisher; we’re a music company,” Rigopulos says. “For us, Rock Band isn’t just a game. It’s a platform for experiencing music.” Rock Band comes preloaded with 40 or 50 songs that run the gamut from classic-rock standards—The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” David Bowie’s “Suffragette City”—to popular contemporary singles such as The Hives’ “Main Offender” and Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So.”

And that’s just a start. Additional tracks will be available for purchase and downloading online. Harmonix pioneered this videogame model with Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360. The game comes packed with 74 songs, but axe freaks who tear through them can buy additional tunes for less than $2 each and download them to the 360’s hard drive. The licensing deals are different from those of TV and movies; instead of paying a single buyout fee, Activision, which published Guitar Hero II, pays a per-unit royalty to the label.

Record companies couldn’t be happier. “It’s people buying music, which is a great thing, and we should do anything we can to help that,” says Rob Stevenson, executive vice president of A&R at Island Def Jam Music Group. Monika Ebly, licensing and publishing coordinator at Victory Records, touts this emerging market as piracy-proof, since the songs are not in a format that can be played on iPods or other portable devices. “We’re not seeing a lot of revenues from iTunes, because people are still downloading music illegally,” Ebly says. “This is a way to put music in front of a new audience, and we’re guaranteed not to get ripped off.”

The payoff for bands is just as great: Veteran musicians can reach a younger generation, and Guitar Hero gives newer artists a fresh way to break out. Before “Six,” by the death-metal band All That Remains, appeared in Guitar Hero II, it was just another fledgling act on the Ozzfest. Now it has sold more than 100,000 records, and band members are greeted by a sea of devil-horn hand salutes every time they kick into their Guitar Hero number at concerts. Says lead singer Philip Labonte, “This has done as much for the band as the single we ran all last summer.”