It’s one thing when a writer or sales analyst tells you music game sales are down. It’s another, all the more disheartening thing, to hear it from someone who makes Guitar Hero games for a living.
“Sales across the board were lower last year,” Neversoft project director Brian Bright told MCV. “Our rival might sugercoat it but I won’t. Sales are down for software and for peripherals. We put out a load of games last year, and even when you add them all together they didn’t do better than World Tour.”
Bright puts the slide down to a loss of focus. “The first three Guitar Hero games had very strong ties to rock ‘n’ roll, but I think with World Tour and 5 we just tried to please everybody. And in the end I think we ended up not pleasing anybody. We put more into this game to give Guitar Hero its life back”.
Precisely the problem with DJ Hero as well. If only Activision’s devs all worked in the same building…
Goraxium
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 6:37 PMIt’s not that GH:WT was bad. Hell, if anything, it was good. It was the endless amount of other games they kept throwing at people that made them wonder why… Look at RB (or more specifically RB2, in spite of the fact those pricks never bothered to release it here): it was all about the music, and getting the music to the people, not about making new games every few months. If Neversoft spent half as much effort getting more content to its customers as it spent on making new versions of an already over-done game, they’d make a killing off the Guitar Hero name itself, which, in spite of their horrible efforts, still remains strong.
weresmurf
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 7:44 PMAgree 100%. It’s a case of less quantity and more quality. Stop pushing a version every single year and push more quality.
A version once every 2 – 3 years that absolutely upped the ante, such as Rockband 3 absolutely does, would be outstanding…
Jim Neale
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 7:48 PMMaybe everyone is happy with their music game and dont need a new one or two every year.
Michael Barnes
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 8:14 PMI can explain all this with one word: FAD.
Needs A New Username
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 8:46 PMmaybe activision will learn
market saturation= bad
Ian Casey
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 9:56 PMWell what do you know, they’ve worked out that oversaturating a market reduces sales and harms a brand. It wouldn’t have taken a nuclear physicist to tell them that in advance.
Let me put it this way – even with a licence to print money, you still couldn’t escape inflation.
Asuron
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 11:11 PMHe’s seriously questioning why the sales are down
YOU OVERSATURATED THE MARKET WITH YOUR GAMES
I mean jesus, if you put out a new game with pretty much the same thing every few months people won’t be buying them
It’s a waste of their money
bennie
Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 8:09 AMPoor guy…. although, I’m sure that his millions of dollars is a great comfort in these difficult times ;)
Braaains
Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 10:37 AMThey’ve released nothing since World Tour that couldn’t have just been DLC for World Tour instead of full releases.
To make it worse, they made the DLC incompatible with previous versions. Here’s a tip for you, Neversoft/Activision: stopping DLC support for GH:WT in favour of GH5 didn’t make me buy GH5. It just stopped me buying any more DLC for GH:WT.
Steven Bogos
Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 12:43 PMHere’s your problem:
People aren’t going to buy the same stupid plastic guitar 6 times.