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Activision Axes Guitar Hero
jtillots writes "Activision Blizzard has canceled the Guitar Hero franchise, citing 'declining revenue of the music game genre.' Also on the chopping block was DJ Hero and True Crime. Fat_bot put it best — it's the new Day the Music Died."
This comes only a few months after Viacom dropped Rock Band developer Harmonix for similar reasons, and less than a week after they closed MTV Games altogether.
until Jimmy Page dies and they can finally get the rights to what everyone always wanted out of this genre.
I recall a time when Guitar Hero was one of the best selling games around
Too right. The first one I played was GH3, way more fun than I expected. So far I've bught something like 5 more games and a few albums of songs, but they started bringing them out *way* faster than I'm willing to buy. Plus, I've been waiting for the real guitar controller for RB3.
which is totally what she said
I see what you did there.
Maybe its just that when you have played guitar hero to one song, you have played'em all.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
http://www.theonion.com/articles/activision-reports-sluggish-sales-for-sousaphone-h,2246/
Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero August 1, 2007 | ISSUE 4331
08.06.09 SANTA MONICA, CA—Despite a catchy 1890s soundtrack and realistic-feeling game play, Sousaphone Hero, the third installment of Activision's massively popular Guitar Hero video game franchise, sold a mere 52 copies in the United States in its opening week, the company reported Monday.
Enlarge Image"In the wake of Guitar Hero's success, we thought the public was more than ready for additional popular American musical genres in a simulated-performance format, but people don't seem to be responding to marches as well as we had hoped," said Activision spokeswoman Melissa Hendleman, whose company spent an estimated $25 million developing the game for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii consoles.
Sousaphone Hero offers two dozen public-domain marches, including 1893's "The Liberty Bell," 1896's "Stars and Stripes Forever," and 1897's "Entry of the Gladiators." The bulky sousaphone-shaped controller coils around the body, and players wear white spat-like foot coverings fitted with sensors that monitor synchronized marching steps. As with the fret buttons on Guitar Hero's guitar peripheral, the sousaphone controller's three valves are color-coded to match on-screen notes the player must hit.
Players may also choose from 27 different fat-guy characters who can be customized with Alpine hats, epaulets, and a mustache editor with a wide array of options.
A gamer plays with a special wireless version of the sousaphone controller, meant to increase ease of play.Hendleman admitted that the $345 retail price might be a bit steep for many consumers. She also conceded that Activision may have erred by not releasing the game between Memorial Day and July 4, the prime parade season in the United States. Even so, she added, Sousaphone Hero contains "more than enough" features to keep gamers absorbed.
"In the career mode, you can rise from playing in park gazebos for church picnics to performing in the halftime show of the Harvard-Yale game," Hendleman said. "If you score enough points, you can unlock the ultimate level: playing in the John Philip Sousa–led Marine Band at Grover Cleveland's inauguration."
"And if you like multiplayer gaming, you're in luck," Hendleman continued. "In Sousaphone Hero's cooperative marching-band mode, as many as 135 of your friends can play simultaneously."
Hendleman also emphasized the "fun" rewards players receive as they become more proficient. If they hit enough correct notes in a row, the on-screen crowd yells "huzzah" and "bully," and the sousaphone controller's spit valve will "drain." Flubbing notes, however, makes the controller "fill" with spit, preventing further play and causing the crowd to throw rotten eggs at the hapless on-screen sousaphonist. If characters earn enough bonus points in career mode, they can spend their Liberty-head nickels on a red, green, or blue "sock" for their sousaphone's bell, or an invigorating chunk of peanut brittle.
Response to Sousaphone Hero on video-gaming message boards has been tepid at best.
That controller is like 100 pounds even though its [sic] only plastic," wrote mastagamer457, a moderator on one Sousaphone Hero message thread. "I think I screwed up my shoulder pretty bad."
"I played the career mode for three hours and kept feeling like I was playing the same annoying circus tune over and over," kiLLlah_steVe of Columbus, OH wrote. "On one song, you're forced to play the same two notes back and forth for 96 measures."
Others have complained that the third valve is used only at the expert level, that even proficient players only score a maximum of 60 points per song, and that the "oompah" meter stays the same shade of gray even if every note is hit. Some also reported that, if not cleaned regularly, the plastic mouthpiece gets crusty.
Professional sousaphone player Eric Winkler
they locked my save game file, so I couldn't back it up.
I'd bought GH 1, 2, 3, then World Tour. When my PS3 WT save couldn't be backed up I was so annoyed I hardly played it, and totally lost interest in it. As far as I'm concerned they shot themselves in the foot with that one, and I'm always wary if buying Activision games now.
Obligatory XKCD. It's OK that you don't get it, but those of us who like music games will keep having fun even if you don't think it's "cool".
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I have friends who work for FreeStyleGames. They found out last night via the Internet that they were probably going to be made redundant today. In my humble opinion, that kind of treatment from Activision is pretty disgraceful.
That's what happens when you rapid-fire iterate on new content in the same template with no significant innovations for extended periods of time.
Sad thing is, from a business perspective, they did a great job and probably wouldn't change a thing if they could go back and do it over. At least not besides somehow managing to get those significant innovations magically and without significant investment to impact their bottom line in the short term.
Okay Harmonix, that one's done. What's the next cool design epiphany?
Pfft, chess sucks when compared to the real thing, commanding a group of 16 warriors on an 8x8 battlefield in a battle to the death.
Monstar L
When I got a Wii, the first thing I ran out to buy for it was Guitar Hero. I'd seen the Youtube movies, and I knew I wanted it. And boy, did I enjoy playing it!
Compared to learning to play a real guitar, Guitar Hero is way easier, gives faster feedback, and much better results. Of course it's nowhere close to the real thing, but for people who have no time, patience or talent to play an instrument (that's the majority of us, right?) it's just a brilliant game that gives one the feeling of playing a real instrument in a band.
Lack of innovation killed it off. A deserved end. But I look forward to what the next thing is an innovative developer can come up with. If you can make us lazy, talentless bums get a glimpse of what it is to be a superhero (like CoD gives you the impression of being a supersoldier without the unpleasantries of getting your legs blown off by a mine), I'll gladly put down hard cash to buy your game. And maybe, *one* of the sequels, too :)
Mortal Kombat is fine, but that's nowhere near as satisfying as beating up people for real.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
I dunno, there's a whole industry of force-feedback steering wheels and pedals and whatnot to make it at least the same kind of thing. You know, you turn a wheel, the car turns.
And let me stress that part again: the car turns when _you_ turn the wheel. In other words, wake me up when such a game at least plays the tune _you_ play, instead of just making you press buttons on cue to a tune that keeps playing the same no matter what you do.
If you want a GT5 equivalent, let's call it Race Car Hero, it would involve watching a pre-recorded race that happens the same no matter what you do, and you just have to press the buttons you're told to press while watching it. But otherwise if you press right instead of left when told, you lose some points but the car on the screen still does the pre-recorded left turn.I think pretty much everyone would agree that such a game would be frakking retarded.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
When they started doing Guitar Hero (this band) and Rock Band (that other band), I had hopes that they would pick up some of the talented bands that I really wanted - in particular Dire Straits. Instead we got Green Day and Metallica. If they had done an all Dire Straits release I would have been the first in line at the store to buy it; I want to use a plastic toy instrument to emulate real musicians, not lame sell-outs.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It is a sad day, guitar hero singlehandedly made the concept of being in a band cool. Before that game professional and talented amateurs alike were resigned to a sad lonely existence where they would be constantly scorned by women and derided by their peers.
Sounds like their hobby beat up your hobby.
THIS.... this is the "new day music died"? I felt pretty sick watching the superbowl half time show (i didn't have control of the remote, damn inlaws) or even some pop singer barfing her way through the national anthem at the same event. Every time i turn on our local radio stations i realize that music is dead, but some game not selling well, that's your sign huh?
That's a bit just, yet a bit unfair at the same time. There's was a major change half way through where the music stopped being .... crap and started being recorded from the original tapes making it sound genuine. It was a leap forward for Guitar Hero In some cases like Metallica Guitar Hero actually had the best mastered version of a Metallica song around. Much better than the raped CD release which was compressed to the point of distortion and just gave people listening brain damage. That said after their move to real music they milked it to death. I mean an entire Guitar Hero dedicated just to Metallica, and entire one dedicated just to Van Halen, and one for the Beatles too? I prefer some variety when I play.
As for the next cool design epiphany. I'm eagerly waiting for the Guitar Pro from Harmonix. Your choice of either a 102 button Fender Mustang replica controller, or an actual Fender Stratocaster that plugs into the console and allows you to play properly.
Agreed. Also IMO this kind of game will appeal to a certain crowd, and the problem is that this crowd will be satisfied with having a couple of these games and not feel the need to buy whatever they put out next. So within a few titles they have saturated the market. I still play RB1 almost every day, when I get tired I download a few new song off the music store and I'm good. I will probably get RB3 soon, but still that's one music game I've played for the last 3 years steady without getting bored. It's not that the genre has lost its appeal, it's that the games out there are good enough that new ones are no longer needed.
Gee, in most race car games I've seen, you can sideswipe the walls, crash into other drivers, spin out, etc, and you aren't immediately disabled, dead or permanently out of the race. The game is forgiving -on purpose-. And by they way, in GH and RB, if you don't push the buttons, the tune does NOT keep on playing. Your errors screw up the music you hear, until eventually the performer 'fails' and the band is booed off the stage. Of course it's artificial - doesn't mean it's not fun.
Your Race Car Hero game sounds a lot like Dragon's Lair, which boiled down to nothing more than 'push the correct button at the beep'. Yet that game did pretty well for it's time.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
Minecraft is fine, but that's nothing as satisfying working in dark, hazardous coal mines and contracting black lung.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
I was happy to buy ones with good new songs. Part of the reason I didn't buy Rock Band 2 was because so many of the songs on it already came with Guitar Hero 4.. I then bought Guitar Hero: Van Halen, and Rock Band: Beatles and Green Day versions because I enjoy the songs. Bought Rock Band 3 because it has good songs, and like I said I think the full guitar playing is a nice idea (I play guitar, though I do prefer drumming overall) and would consider getting the real guitar when it comes out. I think Activision are showing amazingly poor business acumen here. They should be making a boatload of profit, not turning a loss. Better to have a demand for more games and peripherals than to saturate the market. Probably in their efforts to outdo each other Guitar Hero and Rock Band went overboard.. the Harmonix team have been the ones driving things forward the whole time, and would have been better off doing it all on their own.
which is totally what she said
You forget: Activision are on the "beat the horse till it's dead then beat it some more" release schedule. And they don't have actual studios to innovate, they just have "me too me too let's rip someone else's idea off" studios like Neversoft who are designed to drive franchises into the ground.
With Rock Band, Harmonix hasn't been pushing out games constantly, and when they have, there's been actual innovation to go with them - RB2 was a marked improvement over RB1, RB3 brings the full-guitar and keyboard options to the table.
As for DJ Hero and "True Crime"... whoever greenlit them past the first game ought to have been fired.
...but if they cancel heroin hero I will FREAK OUT!
So within a few titles they have saturated the market..
I think so too. People don't produce money in their digestive tract and have it just come out every day in the bathroom to be tossing it at everything they see in front of them.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Just too many "Hero" games in too short a time period. IMO, Activision did it to themselves.
Perhaps the choice to eliminate PS2 from the newer releases hurt as much if not more than the declining interest. Let's face it, you don't need a high-end console to follow a Guitar Hero/Rock band game. ...and, yes i know the PS2 is a dead system, but some of us simply can't buy a new console every few years.
these games were Maddon grade shovelware. Same graphics with minor updates & new songs. If I had to guess, the RIAA wanted too big a piece of the pie and the margins got too slim for Activision...
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No one ever thought air guitar was cool. Saying "the days where 'air guitar' was cool" is kind of like saying "the days when MC Hammer was hardcore" or "the days when Bret Michaels was respected by headbangers."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
*shrug* Like it or hate it, from my perspective, I credit Guitar Hero et al with teaching me to understand the musicality of a lot of music I had previously been unable to listen to.
I didn't grow up listening to punk, metal, or alternative -- as a result, I found them to be overly dissonant with no clear structure or rhythm. These games taught me to appreciate what was actually going on in there, and as a result, my music tastes have expanded to encompass a lot more things (and as a result, buy a lot of CDs I'd never have considered).
From that perspective, I am quite happy for the time I spent playing Guitar Hero -- I sure as hell wouldn't have bought any Rise Against or Social Distortion before playing those games.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It can't be that hard to filter out the fake plastic guitars, surely?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Air guitar is OK up to the point where people start buying fake plastic guitars...oh, hang on.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
its probably due to the fact the music has been a walking zombie for some time. they have gone threw all the good bands and songs aruldy and have nothing left to release in a game. yes they could still do a game with lesser bands and songs but as they see it and they see it correctly they would be little to no profit in it.
I've got a bent fender on my Kia, does that count?
Interesting. My daughter isn't particularly interested in video games. Bust she's asking for the RB Beatles. Maybe there is a market for add-ons for individual groups inside the application.
Sort of like an in-app purchase to buy albums within RB or GH?
As a caveat, she's only seven.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Everyone going on about how great Guitar Hero and Rockband are, but when was the last time you played it or wanted to buy an upgrade.
This genre got greedy and derivative and if you have one version, then there is no need to buy another. Why not make "Green Day Rockband" DLC rather then a regular price game release? Why sell individual songs for $2 instead of rolling out 20 song packs for $5 on a regular interval. Why charge $200 for a set of flimsy plastic controllers? What was the real difference between producing GH1,2,3 RB1,2,3, etc? Why Lego Rockband?
Seriously, they got their money and when the money dried up, they abandoned this genre of game like the plague. But we were all pretty much their gumps for a short period of time and will be again once the next "big fad" in gaming happens.
The latest incarnation was called "Heavy Rain". Sounds like you just don't like timing-based games, which is all Heavy Rain and the music-games are.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
This doesn't surprise me. They have over-saturated the market in a massive way and most of the GH games came with 90% crappy songs that no-one had ever heard of or even wanted to play... but you had to play them to unlock the decent songs. I played GH2 and GH3 to death, after that I got Rock Band and it was a much more polished experience with many more songs that I had actually heard of - never bought a GH game myself again but played a few at friends' places - after GH3 they all just seemed to be "song packs" as opposed to new games.
I never would have thought that there would be so many Guitar Hero 'players' at /. ; ) Sorry if I offended.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
I might have been interested if they did a classic rock version, but all of the versions they have are 90% uninteresting crap and 10% something I might want to hear. Now granted, that is the same ration that pop music uses, but that is also why I don't buy pop music. I only buy music where the whole album is interesting, which is my 95% of my collection is 70's music.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Rock Band kicked their asses. They were starting to get it with Band Hero, but too little too late.
And I suspect the crappy Rock Band 3 release without the pro hardware available and the ever-increasing demands of music publishers will finish it off too.
I might have been interested if they did a classic rock version, but all of the versions they have are 90% uninteresting crap and 10% something I might want to hear. Now granted, that is the same ration that pop music uses, but that is also why I don't buy pop music. I only buy music where the whole album is interesting, which is my 95% of my collection is 70's music.
Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock was mostly Classic Rock.
It's the only way we would have ever gotten a clean copy of Death Magnetic.
Rick Rubin single-handedly ruined the best Metallica album in 20 years, but then people discovered the tracks were unaltered on Guitar Hero 3, and made them available. Although the raw GH3 tracks are not very punchy, there are many fan reproductions that sound surprisingly good without the ridiculous clipping.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
In some cases this already exists, just too few. The online Rock Band and Guitar Hero databases are HUGE, but the songs cost more than at the iTunes store. I think Metallica did something similar. Released their latest album as a CD and as a Guitar Hero download at the same time.
:-)
Kudos, your daughter has a good taste in music.
Looking at the track list on that one, you are correct that this one has many more interesting cuts than the typical release. Nearly 8 listenable songs of out of 30 something. I think I'll still give it a skip though.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Should have deployed star power. Ah well.
I wonder how young Blake Peebles is going after he dropped out of high school (aged 16 - 2008) to focus on playing Guitar Hero professionally...
He could always learn the real guitar and play in a real band.