A few years ago it had a South Park parody, a reality TV show and had apparently ‘saved’ the music industry, yet now Activision have officially plugged the plug on Guitar Hero. What went wrong?
In truth it was a late night financial call to investors but for would-be musicians rocking plastic instruments worldwide, it might as well be referred to as ‘the day the music died’. After nearly five and a half years, numerous platforms, developers and spin-offs, publishers Activision had announced the previously unthinkable – Guitar Hero was dead.
With rival guitar franchise Rock Band’s future uncertain (publishers Viacom have sold the rights and MTV Games has been disbanded), the world’s biggest video game publishers Activision confirmed that “due to continued declines in the music genre, the company will disband Activision Publishing’s Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011.” Progress on the two-year-old DJ Hero franchise has also been cancelled.
Originally released in 2005 for Playstation 2 from publishers RedOctane games and developers Harmonix, Guitar Hero was a surprise hit, despite offering only 17 ‘master recordings’ from its setlist and 30 covers.
With deceptively simple controls but a hardcore difficulty curve, Guitar Hero enraptured gamers casual and hardcore alike, imbuing players with a sense of wish fulfilment that no princess-saving could ever compare with – the feeling of becoming a rock star.
Even the Swedish King and Queen got in on the act – no really, that’s them
In 2006, the name Guitar Hero and RedOctane were both sold to Activision in a $100m deal, while Activision brought in Neversoft on development duties, with Harmonix joining MTV Games for the fledgling Rock Band franchise. Despite its focus on a ‘band experience’ and greater library of downloadable content, it was Guitar Hero which truly left its mark on pop culture.
With the release of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock in 2007 and a pre-release South Park parody episode, the series was about to peak, critically and commercially. According to Activision’s Mike Griffith at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, GHIII was the first video game to exceed $1bn in sales.
With a high price point owed to its pack-in guitar and a healthy appetite for downloadable titles, Guitar Hero had suddenly became a veritable cash cow for Activision, whose Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was about to take the publishers into the stratosphere.
Never one to miss a lucrative opportunity, Activision’s series became a pop culture corner store and follow-ups and spin-offs followed at an unprecedented rate. Aerosmith, for example made more money from Guitar Hero Aerosmith than any single album, while both Metallica and Van Halen followed suit for their own edition.
Soon the Nintendo DS even got its own version and one-off spin-off aimed at a pop audience was released (Band Hero) as the series simultaneously targeted casual audiences. With sales becoming sluggish in 2009, turntables became the new guitars with DJ Hero, a huge critical success that never quite captured the public’s imagination.
You can have an IP that you lovingly care for and release every so often that can last over, or one you ride hard into the ground.
The final Guitar Hero title, Warriors of Rock, eventually sold a paltry 86,000 copies in its first five days in September 2010, in comparison to Legend of Rock’s 1.5m first week sales three years prior. It has been confirmed that following this month’s 10-song DLC pack, announced just this week, will mark the end of original content for the series.
Tweeting his condolences for the series this week, Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski said, “You can have an IP that you lovingly care for and release every so often that can last forever, or one you ride hard into the ground.” In hindsight, few outside of Activision would argue with Cliffy’s sentiment.
Careless planning
Responding to derisory claims from Activision CEO Bobby Kotick prior to the release of his rival’s Medal of Honor, a spokesperson for publisher EA’s mocked Kotick’s perception of dominance, stating “His company is based on three game franchises – one is a fantastic persistent world he had nothing to do with [World of Warcraft]; one is in steep decline [Guitar Hero]; and the third is in the process of being destroyed by Kotick’s own.” The latter was a piercing and on reflection, entirely accurate swipe at Guitar Hero.
Outside of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the music genre has continued to evolve, with Just Dance and Dance Central top sellers over the notoriously cutthroat Christmas season. With dance titles firmly entrenched within the public consciousness (ironically how the trend first hit popularity with arcade hit Dance Dance Revolution), we’ll never truly know if Guitar Hero and its ilk were nothing more than a fad or if they could have existed comfortably alongside its dance-based brethren, had the series been handled carefully.
To destroy a franchise that had a singular title grossing $1 billion in less than four years is an incredible achievement and while Activision can point fingers at the economy or gamer’s changing tastes, the fact remains that 500 employees were last night axed within the publisher’s music divisions through no fault of their own.
Activision were gifted an enormous opportunity, they blew it and all that’s left to say is that just like a classic rock star story, Guitar Hero lived fast and died young.
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