Update: Activision confirms that Guitar Hero and True Crime: Hong Kong are no more, writing “due to continued declines in the music genre, the company will disband Activision Publishing’s Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011. The company also will stop development on True Crime: Hong Kong. These decisions are based on the desire to focus on the greatest opportunities that the company currently has to create the world’s best interactive entertainment experiences.”
Activision’s True Crime update, formerly True Crime: Hong Kong, was pushed back to calendar year 2011 last summer. The title was in development at Modnation Racers studio United Front Games. We last saw the game at GDC 2010.
Activision’s True Crime update, formerly True Crime: Hong Kong, was pushed back to calendar year 2011 last year.
Activision Kills Guitar Hero [Eurogamer]
Adam Ruch
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 8:52 AMMaybe they wouldn’t have to disband the whole studio if they didn’t produce a new Guitar Hero game every 3 months…
Ross Moir
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 10:25 AMIf RockBand plays its cards right, it could recapture the vacated GH market share, as long as they don’t spam us with multiple releases.
Stick with major updates, provide the rest through DLC.
Steve0410
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 9:29 PMRock Band does DLC right (one of the few that do), but even then… an annual ‘main’ release is a bit too regular for me, let alone the billions of spin-offs and cheap cash grabs Activision has unleashed.
nightFlarer
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 9:47 AMSo the True Crime game is no more? I was looking forward to it :(
Mr Waffle
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 10:21 AMI imagine those empty spots on their development schedule are now taken up by Call of Duty titles…
Blake
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 10:24 AMWhat did they expect offering basically the same experience multiple times a year?
Bring a new one in 3 years time and I might be interested.
kkagari
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 10:25 AMso finally people realize guitar hero games are trash?
Ben J
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 10:29 AMSeriously what do they have now? I know they have CoD but that’s the only game they ever push. The whole company can’t live on the success, and then eventual downfall of one game.
I can’t say seeing guitar hero go will upset me. The bargain bin prices of gh6 and dj hero 2 were a pretty big indicator of their popularity.
Steve0410
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 9:32 PMBad news: They have Blizzard, which is guaranteed to keep them solvent for a loonnnng time.
Good news: Blizzard seems unusually resistant to Activision’s money-grubbing and seems to operate with some independence. Their titles are as good as ever.
Which is a painful conundrum for a person like myself who has to choose whether my love of WoW/Starcraft outweighs my hatred of Kotick. Decisions, decisions…
Robert
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 11:50 AMNo surprise at all, really. All the new games are just track updates.
Not that I have anything against that, I have all the games and enjoy playing them with friends. A good time for all. They’d have far more success though going the Rock Band route and having hundreds of (good) tracks available in the online store. I’d much rather buy 50 tracks that I actually want to play than buy 80 which has only 30 I want. Or something like that.
Jackson Thurtle
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 11:53 AMEveryone is talking about Guitar Hero… why is there no more information about True Crime, the much more interesting game? Why did they can that?
…probably because it was going to be bad :<
v4next
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 12:29 PMThis old Activision aint like it used to be, aint like it used to be… (back in the 8-bit/16-bit days I mean)
James Mac
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 1:05 PMRemember MechWarrior 2?
That was Activision as well.
v4next
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 12:31 PMI still reckon Pitfall on the 2600, and Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure on MD are still “their” best games.
Mark Ampersand
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 12:34 PMBut, how am I going to fake-plastic rock-out to old Muse tracks now?!
*whispers* I love you Rock Band!
Vapor
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 12:54 PMMan, I was really looking forward to a new True Crime. I just played through TC:LA again the other day. Was a great series. =(
Pakka
Friday, February 11, 2011 at 1:16 AMI dont understand a decision, especially from the richest gaming publisher going around at the moment, when they axe a game like True Crime which has been in development for some time now and pretty far into that aswell.
Doesn’t make sense really personally.