Guitar Hero Franchise Getting the Ax by Activision?!

[Super Sonic Boom]

Taken directly from Joystiq:
(Click for news article and comments)

Despite a recent cover story in EGM, United Front's True Crime: Hong Kong won't make it to retail. Activision's latest earnings report confirms the game's cancellation, as well as the end of the Guitar Hero franchise.

"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," Activision said in its financial statement. The statement goes on to confirm the cancellation of True Crime. "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 Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg went into a bit more detail on today's investor call:

     "Despite a remarkable 92 rating on DJ Hero 2, a widely well-regarded Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, as well as a 90-plus rated release from our most direct competitor [Rock Band 3], demand for peripheral-based music games declined at a dramatic pace. Given the considerable licensing and manufacturing costs associated with this genre, we simply cannot make these games profitably based on current economics and demand. Instead, what we'll do is focus our time and energies on marketing and supporting our strong catalog of titles and downloadable content, especially to new consumers as the installed base for hardware continues to grow."Hirshberg continued, saying that True Crime's development, "was't going to lead to a title at or near the top of the competitive open-world genre." To put things more directly, Hirshberg added, "To be blunt, it just wasn't going to be good enough."


If that weren't enough bad news, Eurogamer also reports that DJ Hero developer Freestyle Games has suffered "severe layoffs," though it's unclear whether the rhythm series has been affected by the alleged redundancies. We'll update this post as we learn more.

- Will another company pick-up this franchise like Activision did after Harmonix left following "Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's"?
- Has Rockband really won the music genre in gaming?
- Is this genre actually dying?

DISCUSS!

[Gilly]

I still like Guitar Hero's general layout and content over Rock Band. I can see why Rock Band would be winning the competition, especially with their tons of DLC, and the fact that they are using real instruments. The thing is, I still love the solos of Guitar Hero and how they have had challenging songs. I still choose Guitar Hero over Rock Band, but I think that if they had just stuck with what made Guitar Hero as popular as it was back before World Tour, they would still be doing great. Sadly, they released a couple not-so-great Guitar Heroes and they tried copying Rock Band way too much. Shame because I think that WoR was really a step in the right direction. If Guitar Hero is gone then RIP because they really are fun games. I hope we still have Rock Band after Guitar Hero's gone because I love music/arcadey games.

[Tanassy]

I hope neversoft reconsiders, activision never deserved it anyway. Besides, GH can do so much better than Rock band. you watch.

[Super Sonic Boom]

I agree with both of you...Guitar Hero should have been stopped after maybe Metalica or Smash Hits (if it ever was gonna be like that). Guitar Hero 5 was a strong game in my opinion and Warriors of Rock was not bad even though they claim it was. DJ Hero was strong and so was its sequel. It just seems dumb that NOW they finally pull the plug without trying anymore after finally deciding to only produce 1 game per year (there was about 5 to 7 published in 2009).

It would have been interesting to find out what the Guitar Hero game for 2011 would have had in store...

[badgersaur]

yeah.. its too bad to hear... Worriers of Rock was the best one!

[Hakudamashi]

So, instead of making another sequel, they're just gonna update the ones already out?