Billion-Dollar Expectations Caused Activision To ‘Abuse’ Guitar Hero, Says Ex-Publisher

11 responses to “Billion-Dollar Expectations Caused Activision To ‘Abuse’ Guitar Hero, Says Ex-Publisher”

1. 

   legless joe

   February 21, 2011 at 9:07 am

   They were greedy and killed a franchise, yet they won’t learn their lesson and they’ll keep on killing good brands.

   They didn’t just abuse Guitar Hero, they tied it up and sexually assaulted it for 5 years untill its body was so screwed up that their wasn’t enough to even have it buried.

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2. 

   oggob

   February 21, 2011 at 9:08 am

   I think Activision weren’t very smart about the DLC either, constantly Harmonix/Rock Band would release more DLC each week, GH DLC was also more expensive as well.

   Theoretically, there is more money in DLC than there is disc based games, as you will spending ~$80 on ~80 songs for a disc, so ~$1 per song. DLC can cost you over ~$2 per song, so they really needed to be smarter in that aspect.

   I’ve probably picked about 120 DLC songs for RB in packs and so forth, which I would wager would be upwards of ~$200.

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   1. 

      Strange

      February 21, 2011 at 9:58 am

      I would imagine that licencing for the songs would cost a pretty penny which would not leave much room for profit on DLC.

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      1. 

         oggob

         February 21, 2011 at 10:17 am

         So how do disc based games turn any profit? The licencing costs still apply there and I can’t see them getting a “bulk discount” for all the single track for each separate band on the discs.

         Add in manufacturing on the discs, marketing, shipping, etc… I couldn’t see them releasing the game with a loss in mind, DLC is like free money nowdays, that’s why basically every game has some form of it.

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         1. 

            Strange

            February 21, 2011 at 10:31 am

            Honestly, I have no idea how any games make a profit, let alone music games. The whole thing is kind of confounding.

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            1. 

               Richard

               February 21, 2011 at 12:50 pm

               The recent ‘Medal of Honor’ title sold 5 million copies, according to today’s reports. Keep in mind it’s been out for half a year or so, and that sales will continue for as long as the game is playable on a modern console.

               If EA made $20 (USD) from each copy, which one can assume they do (especially when some customers buy DLC), that gives them a $100mil budget to make the game.

               $100,000,000 is enough to pay 300 developers pretty well (100k/year) for a 3-year development cycle and allow for 10% overhead. Game budgets, as far as I know, are usually in the $20-$50 million range for a big title.
               I’d bet the team was smaller than that and the development time was far shorter, too.

               Making games is totally financially possible as long as they sell enough copies (if they don’t – MORE GUNS).

            2. 

               Steve0410

               February 21, 2011 at 1:40 pm

               This is only a tiny percentage of cases. And each year it’s getting worse with dozens of big, expensive games failing, and maybe a couple of ‘blockbuster’ franchises like CoD, Halo and the Blizzard games.

               BLOPs is, at this point, critic-proof. The next one can be utter shit but will still make bank and have no doubt Activision will keep them coming hard and fast until people just become numb. It’s become even more dire than Hollywood where there’s a massive tentpole like Transformers 2 which makes a tonne of money regardless of quality, while hundreds of other films die.

3. 

   Adam Ruch

   February 21, 2011 at 9:32 am

   I think we are kind of agreeing here. IMO Guitar Hero (and Rock Band) should be one game, and everything else is DLC, but DLC the way iTunes works. You go online, find one song you like and buy it for cheap. (Maybe not $0.99 but cheap). I found it ridiculous to call all these other Guitar Hero releases ‘games’ when they were really just new track listings. Forcing people to shell out $70 or whatever at a time every 8 months was stupid. If you had people paying $3-4 every month for 5 years or some such average, you’ve got a way better cash flow and much less cost associated with actually producing new ‘game’ scenarios and pressing discs for public release.

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   1. 

      DansDans

      February 21, 2011 at 10:49 am

      In a perfect world that’s how things work, but there are dozens of new games per month, you’ll get lost in the crowd if you don’t keep your product out there. DLC works fine for the 5-10% of people who buy it, the rest prefer a new disc with new songs (Inc stuff they would never buy but are now interested in)

      This DLC thing is nothing but a fallacy. A small handful of core people buy it vs the hundreds of thousands of casual who don’t. The money is in the disc version, not the DLC.

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4. 

   Denaz

   February 21, 2011 at 1:16 pm

   They really did kill it, I used to love GH, and my GF was much the same, we used to buy everyone that came out, but it just became too much. We’d barely finish one and another was already on shelf

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5. 

   Steve0410

   February 21, 2011 at 1:25 pm

   Activision ran a franchise into the ground by bleeding it dry. Anyone surprised?

   The people who buy Guitar Hero spin-off discs like the Van Halen themed ones are going to be die-hards anyway. Activision could have simply put an album as DLC, make it cheaper and not clog the shelves but no… They oversaturated the market to shit and we wonder why this happens.

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