Industry site Gamasutra is rolling through a series of top-5 lists to close out the year, and today’s entry features their picks for best developer of the year. Among them is Harmonix, for “its ambitious but relatively restrained stewardship of the Rock Band franchise.”

I found this quote interesting:

Harmonix’s stewardship of the mind-boggling voluminous and diverse Rock Band song catalogue has ensured the franchise’s increasingly-broad appeal.

The thing I find interesting is that it points out that this studio isn’t just making games — it’s also making pretty significant decisions about what new music to present to Rock Band players each week. Imagine a single entity deciding which albums debut on iTunes each week, rather than scores of different labels and artists. It’s a lot of power, and a lot of responsibility, and Gamasutra’s right: They’ve been doing a darn fine job of it.

The other four developers on the list are Naughty Dog (Uncharted 2), Rocksteady (Arkham Asylum), Runic (Torchlight), and Valve (Left 4 Dead 2, plus, y’know, several other of the most highly regarded FPSes known to man). It’s pretty auspicious company.

While we’re on the topic of end-of-year lists, I’ll point you to one more from Gamasutra: the Top 5 Game Biz Trends, one of which is a bit about declining sales revenue in the music-game genre. Here’s a telling quote:

[W]ith ugly stories like the Scratch dust-up (Genius sues Activision), Band Hero shenanigans (No Doubt and Activision sue each other), and the sad and pathetic Kurt Cobain tale (Courtney Love sues Activision) the genre has lost some of its charm.

Hm. Do you agree that the genre has “lost some of its charm” thanks to these extracurricular activities?

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