Activision Turns Off the Music for Guitar Hero and DJ Hero Franchises
Publisher lays off 500 workers across multiple game studios
While Activision saw record sales of over $1 billion for its Call of Duty: Black Ops game, the publishing giant had little success in the once-booming music genre. Just months after original Guitar Hero developer Harmonix was unloaded by MTV Games to a group of investors, Activision has pulled the plug on the next Guitar Hero game and also killed DJ Hero. Non-music game True Crime: Hong Kong was also canceled. And the publisher laid off 500 employees. Not even Gene Simmons could save Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock from failure.
Through the first nine months of 2010, sales of music games had generated just $158 million for the game industry in the U.S. compared to over $500 million during that same span in 2009. Warriors of Rock didn’t even top sales of 100,000 copies in its launch month last September. That game is now officially the last Guitar Hero console game.
With the future of Rock Band also pretty much done, the once-booming music genre has finally saturated the market place. In 2005, Harmonix and RedOctane turned Guitar Hero into a mainstream sensation by introducing plastic guitar controllers that allowed anyone to play like a rock star. In 2006, Activision purchased RedOctane and the Guitar Hero brand, while MTV Games purchased Harmonix and started developing the Rock Band franchise. In its heyday, both Rock Band and Guitar Hero thrived. Guitar Hero III was the first game to generate over $1 billion in sales.
But too many sequels, and failed stand-alone games like The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero: Van Halen, ultimately sealed the fate of both franchises in the console space. Both games are still available on mobile phones.
Poor sales and increased fees to get artists involved in standalone projects, as well as to get their music in games, made it impossible for Activision (or MTV Games) to make a profit on these expensive titles. Simmons said there wasn’t going to be a Guitar Hero: KISS game because Activision was talking pennies and he was talking dollars, for example.
With most gamers already owning the pricey plastic instruments, recent game sales have focused on the $60 game. As a result, publishers saw a drastic drop in the expensive bundles that once flew off store shelves. It also seemed like the game developers were running out of fresh ideas for the genre, which had new games coming out every single year.
DJ Hero, which Activision touted as the bestselling new IP of 2010, failed to entice gamers to give the sequel a try. While Activision moved plenty of bundles with the first game, consumers balked at the bundles for DJ Hero 2 and that franchise has crashed and burned.
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About the Author
John Gaudiosi
Editor-in-Chief
John Gaudiosi has been covering videogames for the past 20 years for outlets like The Washington Post, CNET, Wired Magazine and CBS.com. He has focused on the convergence of entertainment and videogames for outlets like Video Business, Home Media Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Gamerlive.TV and is also a freelance game columnist for Reuters and writes for outlets like Forbes.com, NVISION, Official PlayStation Magazine, EGM Now, Geek Monthly, PrimaGames.com, and Yahoo! Games. John also serves as the video game expert for NBC in Washington D.C. and has produced videogame documentaries for The History Channel and Starz Entertainment. John was named one of the Top 50 Game Journalists in the world by Next-Gen.biz in 2007. He is the co-author of Scholastic Books' How to Get into Videogames, Prima Publishing's Madden: Twenty Years of Videogame Football and Electronic Arts: The Official History.
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