Well, you gotta give Activision credit; when they run something into the ground, they’re the first to admit it. Now, bear in mind that statement isn’t true the in the slightest. However, while they may not be taking credit for murdering the music-game genre, they aren’t under any illusion that it is, most certainly, dead.
Yesterday, Activision announced that they would be canceling both True Crime and an unnamed Guitar Hero title slated for this year. DJ Hero 2 dev FreeStyleGames, after having been purchased by Activision in 2008, has now been hit by massive layoffs casting doubt on any future movement from that series.
Today, Activision clarified the matter stating, quite simply, that despite the enormous popularity during its peak, the music-genre has been in dramatic decline for the past two years. So much so, that between music licensing fees and peripheral-manufacturing costs, its simply too costly a genre to be profitable any longer.
Activision has stated that they will release the planned DLC packs for February but, beyond that, there will be no further content released for either the Guitar Hero or DJ Hero franchises. With the recent sale and uncertain future of Harmonix and its Rock Band series, we may have very well seen the last of the rhythm-game-genre for some time.
So Axeheads, what do you think? Are you rejoicing or regretting Activision’s decision? Is the music-genre a trend that just ran its course, or a breed of game that was plagued by overexposure and overcharging unto its own ending? Drop your axe on either side in the comments!
While this is never good to see people out of work, in reality the way Activision handled music games with saturating the market killed the genre. If it was, say, like Rock Band in its release every few years (numbered) it would probably still be fine, but with a few a year…not quite. This also follows the Activision trend of running things into the ground that were once big, and while I dare say it, Call of Duty can be going this route as well (but not anytime in the near future).
People lose their jobs when something like this happens.
Tell me why Bobby Kotick, who ran the thing into the ground, still has a job? Why do the developers have to suffer but the giant idiot who caused this catastrophe still sitting on Activision’s throne?
I guess it’s hard to get the devil away from his job.
I am happy to see the music genre die. I never understood why people liked playing guitar hero anyway
Activision is officially a one-trick pony I guess, Blizzard excluded
It wasn’t fun until Rock Band created “Rock Band parties”. Get a bunch of guys and gals together, play Rock Band, you’ll know the relevance of it all. In an era where online is everything, few games managed to get 4 people or more in the same room to play the same game.
Activision is clearly not learning from its own mistakes.
If they release more than 1 COD a year + release a COD MMO then they oversaturate their own market again and people are going to get tired of COD (if not already).
Don’t get me wrong, i really liked Modern Warfare 1 & 2, but i don’t like spending 60€ for the same thing every year and i play more than enough games to have some variation.
If they also run COD into the ground, are they going to ask Blizzard nicely to release at least 1 expansion pack per year for WOW, Starcraft II and the next Diablo?
I really hate seeing companies bought by a publisher, especially when stuff like this happens.
Regarding the music genre, it doesn’t bother me. I played Guitar Hero but really not a game I would find myself playing over and over again. As far as their sales go, it’s easily understandable why that tanked. Having to pay out royalties to the bands and their labels, and when you release a Guitar Hero every year, maybe even a couple within that year, price will add up. If you’re not selling enough of them to make a profit, why continue?
I hate seeing developers being bought out and then fired because of selfish business decisions made by the publishers. Yeah, I know it’s a business, but stuff like this should not even be legal, if you understand what I’m getting at.
It’s not if, it’s when.
And I highly doubt it. Blizzard understands that it can’t oversaturate a market and is pretty independent from Activision. If anything, when CoD falls, Blizzard will be the only thing keeping Activision afloat, so pissing off the independent cash cow is probably not a good idea. Kotick seems to be incapable, probably for legal reasons, to impose his way of doing things on Blizzard. I pray it stays this way.
And yet the corpse of Tony Hawks Pro Skater still dangles around in the background a full 12 years after it initially came out and 9 or so years since it was any good.
I don’t have much knowledge about the American legal and economic system so I’m having trouble understanding why people keep getting on board with Activision despite their clear and public history of ‘RAPE and RUIN’.
Is the Bobster literally Satan, master of trickery? The Corruptor? Seriously. I’m not making a joke. History has showed that making a deal with the demon in question will only lead to downfall (of your company).
this is a preview of what is gonna happen with CoD…
Activision did make to many guitar hero games. I might just be saying this because i am a Harmonix fanboy but GH has suked ever since hrmonix left it. In GH3 it was whay harder to hit the notes than it was in gh 1,2 and rock the 80s. I also dident like the look of the game i never felt good while playing GH3. As my axe head Zoltan was saying activisoin just rapes people. did u hear about what they did to Infinnety ward last year shit. Now back to the music and rythem stuff. I was so glad when i playd rock band for the first time. it just felt right. and it has just grown. the awsome light show and animations whiel playing the game and i just felt good. And even after harmonix said they werent gonna make more rock band game THEY ARE AT LEAST STILL SOUPORTING IT WITH DLC EVRY WEEK!!! Rock band is going to keep on growing even thogh they would’t be adding an outher number to the game like a sertent outher (GH) they will be giving us more to play evry week. Rest in Pece to all the graet things that were cancelled in rock band…. oh and Guitar hero was dead to me ever since Neversoft took over. C’mon it’s in there name even they shoul of “NEVER” lett them distroy GH.
So now that Guitar Hero is no more, what will happen to all of the licensing issues that prohibited Rock Band to get iconic bands in their library like metallica or aerosmith?
Also, the real reason that Activision got rid of the Guitar Hero franchise was not because the lack of demand for the music genre in general. It was because of the lack of demand for the garbage they put out every few months. Consumers got bored and almost sick of what Activision was putting out there. Yes it’s nice to have an updated library every once in a while with new songs and updated graphics (which sometimes weren’t even the case), but it’s easy to see that Activision did not put their heart into making quality games or else this franchise would still be successful. I am still a loyal fan to the music genre scene and I hope that RockBand never has to experience what the Guitar Hero franchise had to endure.
Its easy to blame Kotick for running the music genre into the ground, but the music genre ran itself in the ground. When it comes to the genre there is no innovation, the only thing innovative with rockband was the inclusion of drums, and rockband is going down, is that Activisions fault? The only thing you get with music games is 50 new songs every new iteration, and maybe a new mode or two too teach you how to play a real guitar, but do hardcore gamers, or the casual want that. Another problem is the peripherals are too damn expensive. Not many people have enough money to buy a rockband, or guitar hero, so I think believe that is another factor. People are worried that Kotick is going to run COD in the ground, or Blizzard because of Guitar hero and the aforementioned Tony Hawk games, but chill I dont think that will happen.
Thank christ. I am so sick of those stupid games everywhere. As a DJ myself, watching people think they are DJ’s and doing that bullshit seriously pisses me off. I can only imagine how people who actually play guitar feel about morons pounding on a plastic button.
Kind of ironic this, seeing as how Activision had that big concert to-do at E3 based around these two titles.
Rock Band introduced drums and vocals and finally keyboards in its 3rd iteration.
Innovations can be incremental but spamming the market has dire effects, exhausting it quickly. It was a trend already seen around various band themed Rock Bands and the countless numbers of “X” Hero.
I don’t think it’s an issued of peripheral costs, but rather one of content. These games are the perfect DLC whores and some of them tried to push too hard on the big 60$ titles instead of dishing out downloable content. In a way, although the Beatles Rock Band and Green Day Rock Band were failures, the idea behind wasn’t bad, only a question of pricing. The way they pushed out their games with incremental updates was smarter.
The Hero franchise however, took a turn for the worst. I can’t count the number of games carrying that title. It was simply ridiculous. And in the end, Guitar Hero 5 did nothing new at all and was massacred by the press.
Harmonix might survive with a game like Dance Central. We’ll see.
Is Kotick going to run CoD into the ground? If you’ve followed the saga with the sacking of Infinity Ward’s founders and the 3 studios now sharing work on the next CoD title, you can realize that they’re just trying to push one out next year, whether or not the storm needs to be stabilized first. How will people answer to next CoD, looking for yet another November release, while it’s being drowned by so many more quality titles coming out fall of this year?
Kotick thinks he can milk these franchises every year, like Madden, NHL or FIFA on EA’s side, but sports games are very different from other genres. Tiny incremental updates and roster updates don’t go well for shooters.
And no, Kotick can’t run Blizzard into the ground. People forget that the name of the company is Activision Blizzard. Obvioously, Blizzard holds a lot of weight amd can’t be rolled over.
I can see where your comming from as I also DJ myself and had the same opinion as you up until Xmas where my girlfriends little brother got DJ Hero and all 3 of us spent xmas day mashing out tunes :)
As soon as we were playing it the game made more sense. Its FUN just to muck about and play along to a tune.
Admitadly I was never moved enough to go and buy a copy of the game and controller myself because it was and still is really expensive for one game which is probably where Activision where finding it hard to make that second franchise DJ Hero really take off.
I think its a real shame because DJ Hero was just starting to take real form on what people could do with it and what the devs could make. Though im happy to see Guitar Hero go because they had already run that into the ground.
Touche