Task: Question Answering
Input (English): Context: The or simply, DS, is a 32-bit dual-screen handheld game console developed and released by Nintendo. The device went on sale in North America on November 21, 2004. The DS, short for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld gaming: two LCD screens working in tandem (the bottom one featuring a touchscreen), a built-in microphone, and support for wireless connectivity. Both screens are encompassed within a clamshell design similar to the Game Boy Advance SP. The Nintendo DS also features the ability for multiple DS consoles to directly interact with each other over Wi-Fi within a short range without the need to connect to an existing wireless network. Alternatively, they could interact online using the now-closed Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service. Its main competitor was Sony's PlayStation Portable as part of the seventh generation era., The original console in the series was the first video game console to ship 100 million units, 9 years and 6 months after its initial launch. Its successor, the PlayStation 2, was released in 2000. The PlayStation 2 is the best-selling home console to date, having reached over 155 million units sold as of December 28, 2012. Sony's next console, the PlayStation 3, was released in 2006 and has sold over 80 million consoles worldwide as of November 2013. Sony's latest console, the PlayStation 4, was released in 2013, selling 1 million consoles in its first 24 hours on sale, becoming the fastest selling console in history., Viacom Media Networks (formerly MTV Networks) is an American mass media division of Viacom that oversees the operations of many of its television channels and Internet brands, including Nickelodeon, BET, CMT, Comedy Central, VH1 and the original MTV channel in the United States. Its sister international division is Viacom International Media Networks., In the history of video games, the sixth-generation era (sometimes referred to as the 128-bit era; see "Bits and system power" below) refers to the computer and video games, video game consoles, and video game handhelds available at the turn of the 21st century which was from 1998 to 2008. Platforms of the sixth generation include the Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft Xbox. This era began on November 27, 1998 with the Japanese release of the Dreamcast, and it was joined by the PlayStation 2 in March 2000 and the GameCube and Xbox in 2001. The Dreamcast was discontinued in 2001, the GameCube in 2007, Xbox in 2009 and PlayStation 2 in 2013. Though the seventh generation of consoles started in November 2005 with the launch of the Xbox 360, the sixth generation did not end until January 2013, when Sony announced that the PlayStation 2 had been discontinued worldwide., MTV (originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable and satellite television channel owned by Viacom Media Networks (a division of Viacom) and headquartered in New York City. Launched on August 1, 1981, the channel originally aired music videos as guided by television personalities known as "video jockeys" (VJs). In its early years, MTV's main target demographic was young adults, but today it is primarily towards teenagers, high school students and college students. MTV has toned down its music video programming significantly in recent years, and its programming now consists mainly of original reality, comedy and drama programming and some off-network syndicated programs and films, with limited music video programming in off-peak time periods. It has received criticism towards this change of focus, both by certain segments of its audience and musicians. MTV's influence on its audience, including issues involving censorship and social activism, has also been a subject of debate for several years., The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed by Sony. Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004. The system was released in Japan on , 2004, in North America on , 2005, and in the PAL region on , 2005. It primarily competed with the Nintendo DS, as part of the seventh generation of video games., The PlayStation 3 (abbreviated as PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the successor to PlayStation 2, and is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It competed with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles. It was first released on November 11, 2006, in Japan, November 17, 2006 in North America, and March 27, 2007 in Europe and Australia., Rock Band is a series of music video games developed by Harmonix and MTV Games , and distributed by Electronic Arts for the Nintendo DS , iOS , PlayStation 2 , PlayStation 3 , PSP , Wii , and Xbox 360 game systems . The series , inspired by Harmonix 's previous efforts on the Guitar Hero series , allows up to four players to simulate the performance of popular rock music songs by playing with controllers modeled after musical instruments . Players can play the lead guitar , bass guitar , keyboard , and drums parts to songs , as well as sing into a USB microphone . Players are scored on their ability to match scrolling musical notes while playing instruments , and by their ability to match the singer 's pitch on vocals . The concept for Rock Band was formed while Harmonix was working on the Guitar Hero series , with the idea to expand the note - matching gameplay into multiple instruments . When their Guitar Hero partner , RedOctane , was acquired by Activision , Harmonix was acquired by MTV Games , a division of Viacom , allowing them to pursue the title . The first game in the series , Rock Band , was released in 2007 and its sequel Rock Band 2 was released in 2008 . As the rhythm game market began to flounder in 2009 , Viacom put Harmonix up for sale , but investors were able to buy the company , making it an independent studio . Harmonix would go on to expand the series , including obtaining the lucrative licensing needed for The Beatles : Rock Band in 2009 . Rock Band 3 was released in 2010 which introduced new `` Pro '' features and keyboard parts . Following saturation of the rhythm game market , Harmonix opted to wait on releasing another main title for several years . Upon the release of the next generation of consoles , the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One , Harmonix released Rock Band 4 in October 6 , 2015 ; the company does not plan to release further versions of the game for these consoles but instead see Rock Band 4 as a platform they can continue to expand on through game patches . Each Rock Band game comes with approximately 40 to 80 licensed songs from across all ranges of rock music and spanning from the 1960s to present day . In nearly all cases , songs released for one game could be exported to be used in future games in the series . Further , Harmonix provided 275 consecutive weeks ( between 2007 and 2013 ) of regular downloadable content , in the form of additional downloadable songs ; with the release of Rock Band 4 , Harmonix has restarted these regular content releases . Harmonix has also created standalone Track Packs that contain either a selection of downloadable content , or a selection of band - specific songs . The company also designed the Rock Band Network to allow bands and labels to publish their songs as Rock Band tracks that can be purchased by players ; the service was discontinued in September 2014 to allow Harmonix to focus on other projects . To date , over 13 million copies of Rock Band titles have been sold netting more than $ 1 billion in total sales . Over 4,000 songs representing more than 1,200 different artists are available in the franchise library , and over 130 million downloadable song purchases have been made ., A melody ("singing, chanting"), also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm, while more figuratively, the term can include successions of other musical elements such as tonal color. It may be considered the foreground to the background accompaniment. A line or part need not be a foreground melody., The guitar is a musical instrument classified as a string instrument with anywhere from four to 18 strings, usually having six. The sound is projected either acoustically, using a hollow wooden or plastic and wood box (for an acoustic guitar), or through electrical amplifier and a speaker (for an electric guitar). It is typically played by strumming or plucking the strings with the fingers, thumb and/or fingernails of the right hand or with a pick while fretting (or pressing against the frets) the strings with the fingers of the left hand. The guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning. The modern guitar was preceded by the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, and the five-course baroque guitar, all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument., The , released in February 2003, is an upgraded version of Nintendo's Game Boy Advance. The "SP" in the name stands for "Special". The SP is accompanied by the Nintendo DS (released in November 2004) and the Game Boy Micro (released in September 2005)., The is an 8-bit handheld video game device with interchangeable cartridges developed and manufactured by Nintendo, which was first released in Japan on , in North America on and in Europe on . It is the first handheld console in the Game Boy line and was created by Satoru Okada and Nintendo Research & Development 1. This same team, led by Gunpei Yokoi at the time, is credited with designing the Game & Watch series as well as several popular games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Redesigned versions were released in 1996 and 1998 in the form of Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Light (Japan only), respectively., The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. The Xbox 360 competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles. The Xbox 360 was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detailed launch and game information divulged later that month at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3)., Viacom, Inc. (known simply as Viacom) is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in cinema and cable television. It is currently the world's sixth largest broadcasting and cable company in terms of revenue, behind Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, Time Warner, 21st Century Fox and CBS Corporation, respectively. Voting control of Viacom is held by National Amusements, Inc., a privately owned theater company controlled by the billionaire Sumner Redstone. Redstone also holds via National Amusements a controlling stake in CBS Corporation., Lead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure. The lead is the featured guitar, which usually plays single-note-based lines or double-stops.
In rock, heavy metal, blues, jazz, punk, fusion, some pop, and other music styles, lead guitar lines are usually supported by a second guitarist who plays rhythm guitar, which consists of accompaniment chords and riffs., A microphone, colloquially nicknamed mic or mike, is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal., Trip Hawkins (born December 28, 1953) is an American entrepreneur and founder of Electronic Arts, The 3DO Company, and Digital Chocolate., Harmonix Music Systems, Inc., doing business as Harmonix, is an American video game development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, best known for its music video games., The PlayStation 2 (abbreviated as PS2) is a home video game console that was developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the successor to the PlayStation, and is the second installment in the PlayStation lineup of consoles. It was released on March 4, 2000 in Japan, October 26, 2000 in North America, November 24, 2000 in Europe, and November 17, 2000 in Australia. It competed with Sega's Dreamcast, Microsoft's Xbox, and Nintendo's GameCube in the sixth generation of video game consoles., Rock music is a genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the 1950s, and developed into a range of different styles in the 1960s and later, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s' and 1950s' rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by blues, rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources., The is a home video game console released by Sega on November 27, 1998 in Japan, September 9, 1999 in North America, and October 14, 1999 in Europe. It was the first in the sixth generation of video game consoles, preceding Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox. The Dreamcast was Sega's final home console, marking the end of the company's 18 years in the console market., Abandoning previous ventures in favor of toys in the 1960s, Nintendo then developed into a video game company in the 1970s, ultimately becoming one of the most influential in the industry and Japan's third most-valuable company with a market value of over $85 billion. From 1992 until 2016, Nintendo was also the majority shareholder of Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners., The is a home video game console released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14, 2001; in North America on November 18, 2001; in Europe on May 3, 2002; and in Australia on May 17, 2002. The sixth-generation console is the successor to the Nintendo 64 and competed with Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox., The (abbreviated as GBA) is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, in North America on June 11, 2001, in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001, and in the People's Republic of China on June 8, 2004 (excluding Hong Kong). Nintendo's competitors in the handheld market at the time were the Neo Geo Pocket Color, WonderSwan, GP32, Tapwave Zodiac, and the N-Gage. Despite the competitors' best efforts, Nintendo maintained a majority market share with the Game Boy Advance.
As of June 30, 2010, the Game Boy Advance series has sold 81.51 million units worldwide. Its successor, the Nintendo DS, was released in November 2004 and is also compatible with Game Boy Advance software., Tencent Holdings Limited is a Chinese investment holding company whose subsidiaries provide media, entertainment, internet and mobile phone value-added services and operate online advertising services in China. Its headquarters are in Nanshan District, Shenzhen., Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll or rock 'n' roll) is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, from African-American musical styles such as gospel, jazz, boogie woogie, and rhythm and blues, with country. While elements of rock and roll can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country records of the 1930s, the genre did not acquire its name until the 1950s., Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user. These computers were a distinct market segment that typically cost much less than business, scientific or engineering-oriented computers of the time such as the IBM PC, and were generally less powerful in terms of memory and expandability. However, a home computer often had better graphics and sound than contemporaneous business computers. Their most common uses were playing video games, but they were also regularly used for word processing, doing homework, and programming., In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as a typically audible mechanical wave of pressure and displacement, through a transmission medium such as air or water. In physiology and psychology, sound is the "reception" of such waves and their "perception" by the brain. Humans can hear sound waves with frequencies between about 20 Hz and 20 kHz. Sound above 20 kHz is ultrasound and below 20 Hz is infrasound. Other animals have different hearing ranges., Games designed to take advantage of Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection offered Internet play integrated into the game. When promoting this service, Nintendo emphasized the simplicity and speed of starting an online game. For example, in "Mario Kart DS", an online game was initiated by selecting the online multiplayer option from the main menu, then choosing whether to play with friends, or to play with other gamers (either in the local region or worldwide) at about the same skill level. After a selection was made, the game started searching for an available player., Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers responsible for its games. As of 2014, Electronic Arts was the world's fourth-largest gaming company by revenue after Tencent, Sony and Microsoft 
The company sparked controversies over its advertising efforts, and acquisition of other studios., Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and north of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a port for lumber and other goods. The county seat of San Mateo County, it is the home of several technology companies such as Box, Oracle, Evernote, Wealthfront, and Electronic Arts. At the 2010 census, the city had a population of 76,815. The Port of Redwood City is the only deepwater port on San Francisco Bay south of San Francisco. Redwood City is the location of the San Mateo County Jail, for both women and men. The Malibu Grand Prix long time landmark was recently demolished along with the city's only Mini Golf, Go-Kart, Video Game Arcade, and Batting Cages. Malibu Grand Prix's previous location is currently the construction site of a new additional Jail and Inmate housing facility. The city has a motto "Climate Best By Government Test" which is a reference to it being one of the top German scouted scientific climates and the city was one of the locations mapped by them during their testing and data collection. The Hetch Hetchy water pipeline runs through Redwood City and supplies a vast majority of the surrounding area with low grain (+/ 3 grains) rated water., Microsoft Corporation (commonly referred to as Microsoft or MS) is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As of 2016, it was the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies., The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii competed with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others. , the Wii leads its generation over PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in worldwide sales, with more than 101 million units sold; in December 2009, the console broke the sales record for a single month in the United States., Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the Sony Group, which is engaged in business through its four operating components  electronics (video games, network services and medical business), motion pictures, music and financial services. These make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. Sony's principal business operations include Sony Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Mobile (formerly Sony Ericsson) and Sony Financial. Sony is among the Semiconductor sales leaders by year and as of 2013, the fourth-largest television manufacturer in the world, after Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and TCL., Japan ("Nippon" or "Nihon" ; formally "" or "Nihon-koku", means "State of Japan") is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, It is lying off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland (east of China, Korea, Russia) and stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and near Taiwan in the southwest. , Subject: rock band, Relation: developer, Options: (A) acquire (B) electronic arts (C) harmonix music systems (D) ibm (E) melody (F) microsoft (G) nickelodeon (H) nintendo (I) nintendo research & development 1 (J) perception (K) renaissance (L) samsung (M) sega (N) sony (O) sony computer entertainment (P) sony interactive (Q) taiwan (R) tencent holdings (S) the 3do company (T) viacom
Output (English): harmonix music systems