Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Activision Axes Guitar Hero

Posted by Soulskill on from the death-of-a-genre dept.

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.

1 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Weird by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is true, 100 times over. The key has always been Harmonix: Harmonix developed Guitar Hero 1 and 2, which were great. Activision then bought the franchise, ditched Harmonix, and released a barrage of crappy Guitar Hero games. Harmonix went on to create Rock Band, and Activision copied the band concept. The only reason Activision had a few sales successes after ditching Harmonix is because they were literally riding the reputation Harmonix had built for the series with the first two incarnations.

    It simply can't be said enough - Harmonix knows how to make appealing music games, but Activision has nearly run the entire genre into the ground.