Guitar Hero III the First Game to $1 Billion In Sales

The Opposable Thumbs blog reports that Guitar Hero III has reached a financial milestone, becoming the first individual video game to reach $1 billion in total sales. The number is even higher if you consider the rest of the franchise. In addition to helping drive the video game industry during tough economic times (much like the Wii), it's helping other industries as well: "... aside from the fact that Guitar Hero: Aerosmith had sold three times as many copies as the band's last album during their respective first weeks, musicians whose music is featured in the game has seen a rise in music sales to the tune of 15-843 percent." And CVG notes, "... two-thirds of non-musicians exposed to music games plan to start playing a real instrument in the next couple of years." Also, Rock Band creator Harmonix may be looking into a partnership with the record labels to sell music for use outside of the games.

Comments

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[Drakkenmensch]

Interesting fact - because of the guitar controller it comes bundled with, the regular sale price of GH3 is DOUBLE that of any other regular game (like Gears of War, GTA4, Resistance 2 and so on). Factor in purchased downloadable music tracks, and suddenly GH3 may not have sold as many copies as this article seems to imply. This higher purchase price and nearly endless source of added income suddenly makes it pretty easy to hit the billion dollar mark as opposed to say, Halo 3 or Little Big Planet (with nearly infinite FREE downloable potential).

Could we perhaps see an amount of UNITS SOLD, with comparisons to other best selling titles?