Guitar Hero Huang Looks to Take the Console out of Control with Green Throttle

Charles Huang is out to topple Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox.

The CEO of Green Throttle Games is welcoming Ajay Chopra, a general partner at Trinity Ventures, to his company as part of a $6 million Series A round of funding to launch his new startup. DCM also participated in the round.

Having co-founded the smash-hit series Guitar Hero, Huang insists the gaming business is viable—even after well-hyped and well-funded startups like Zynga turned in poor performances in public markets—it is just the console, produced by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, that is not. Speaking with peHUB, Huang said the old methodology of pouring $50 million or more into making a game and selling a disc for $60 in retail outlets is already dying.

“That works for Call of Duty—just not for anything else,” he said.

Green Throttle is looking to turn users’ smartphones and tablets into fully interactive consoles. The company makes controllers, which users wirelessly connect through Bluetooth once a tablet is connected to a full-sized television. It appears that Huang is well along in his mission to eliminate the console already.

“Tablets are going to become *the* entertainment device,” Huang said.

Green Throttle can already be downloaded on most of the biggest-selling Android devices sold over the last year and a half, Huang told peHUB, and he anticipates it to be compatible with iOS in 2013.

Green Throttle both promotes other developers’ games and works with them to make outside products compatible with its console-less console system that allows users to take mobile battles to the big screen.

For this venture, Huang will be joined by Green Throttle’s new president and COO Matt Crowley, ex-Palm and Nokia product lead, and Karl Townsend, a lead engineer for the Palm Pilot. Townsend will serve as the company’s CTO.

Much of the company’s new round will go toward developing new games, Huang said. While he talked with peHUB about Green Throttle’s new round, the new CEO acknowledged that he and his startup are in much different territory than their predecessors.

“The mobile sector is the scariest sector I’ve ever seen for an entrepreneur,” he said. “The funding environment [for gaming startups] has changed since the Facebook IPO.”

Image Credit: Green Throttle