Lagging sales of Guitar Hero: World Tour are not an indication that the $1 billion-plus franchise has "peaked," analyst Todd Greenwald with Signal Hill contended on Wednesday.
"Guitar Hero sell-through a bit soft, but not a disaster," said Greenwald of Activision's latest franchise entry, which incorporates microphone, drum and guitar controllers. He said the full band bundle has sold well, but admitted sales of the standalone game and guitar/software kit have been "sluggish" when compared to the record-breaking Guitar Hero III.
However, he refused to believe that the franchise's popularity has peaked. "Despite this 'weakness,' we disagree strongly with those who contend that Guitar Hero is a 'fad,' or that the franchise peaked last year with [Guitar Hero III]."
Greenwald added, "For the year, the overall Guitar Hero franchise is up substantially (including extensions like Guitar Hero Aerosmith and Guitar Hero On Tour). North America sales are likely to be up over 20 percent for the year, while Europe could be up nearly 300 percent. Furthermore, the title count will expand materially in 2009, driving further growth with potential titles like GH: Metallica, GH: Jimi Hendrix, DJ Hero and more."
These groundbreaking video games changed gaming forever and drew in scores of fans in the process.
The Guitar Hero franchise died in the wake of Activision's lust for Call of Duty, but we should be dusting off those plastic guitars for a new Guitar Hero game.
Guitar Hero was good. The problem was Activision started creating many versions. Guitar Hero had the every one year cycle like COD and people felt they were being robbed.
Why in the hell would one want to spend time to learn a button mashing order when you can lean to play a real guitar in the same time frame.
As the world reels from the shockwaves of the seismic news that Microsoft is acquiring the proverbial swamp of the video-game landscape, Activision Blizzard King, it only seems natural that our minds should now shift towards what the fallout will be for presumably years if not decades to come.
Another Prototype would be awesome.
As for Singularity, I don't necessarily need a sequel, I just want to see Raven be able to flex their creative muscle again; not just be relegated to assisting with CoD. A lot of the old guard is still with the company.
That's part of what I'm hoping to see come from this acquisition. Revive teams like Vicarious Visions and Ravem to actually allow them to work on their own new projects again.
I'd like to see Activision get the Transformers license again and continue the War and Fall of Cybertron games. the movie games were crap and the game that combined both movie and Fall and War of Cybertron sucked a new Prototype would also be good as well.
Re-imagining of River Raid and the original adventurer Pitfall. Oh Zork is also a great game.