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http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/09/guitar.hero.gone/index.html

Seems that Activision Blizzard is discontinuing Guitar Hero as it's no longer a viable market.

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.

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So what do you guys think? Are they right?

Oops! Didn't mean to lock it!

Yeah it was getting kind of ridiculous. Nothing lost by this. Rockband is still going to be around at least another year or two I'm sure.

Our drummer works for Activision and did work on the GH games so we were discussing this at practice last night, he said that it really is just a dead market.

Probably wouldn't be so dead if it weren't for the 120 Guitar Hero branded games made in the last 2 years.

I think it has a lot more to do with the market getting over-saturated (I believe 6 "GH" style games came out last year) than with GH itself.

Yeah I think they went REALLY wrong with releasing certain "Band Only" versions. I really preferred playing the big compilation versions, so I never bought any of the side-releases.

Sorry, I meant "GH" style games, not actual GH games. GH milked it for sure, but when you have half a dozen games from different companies out there that are basically the same thing... well... people get worn out.

There were 25 SKUs and 9 separate games in 2009. That's milking it pretty hard and that was the beginning of the end. Activision seem to be taking this road with all of their franchises.

Guitar Hero will forever be the perfect model for how to run a popular franchise into the ground. Hopefully it will be a cautionary tale.

I'm not saying they didn't over-milk it, just that the flooded market is slightly bigger than merely Activision.

Tress said:

Guitar Hero will forever be the perfect model for how to run a popular franchise into the ground. Hopefully it will be a cautionary tale.

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They'll probably think of it as a good thing they pushed out all those different products while they could.

Shakey said:

They'll probably think of it as a good thing they pushed out all those different products while they could.

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I think you are probably right, however I'm not sure they are wrong, it always felt kind of like a fad to me, something that could only go on so long, they might have recognized it and pushed it as hard as they could for as long as they could.

Guitar hero is so 2000 and late.

Though I have to get Def Jam Rap Star once it comes down in price/I have someone to play it with/I check myself before I wreck myself.

Espy said:

I think you are probably right, however I'm not sure they are wrong, it always felt kind of like a fad to me, something that could only go on so long, they might have recognized it and pushed it as hard as they could for as long as they could.

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That wouldn't surprise me. With the whole set of instruments there really isn't anywhere to take it other than to release new songs. I wouldn't be surprised if with all the licensing costs, the games never really made all that much money. The big money coming from the sale of the instruments.

It was pretty ingenius to sell $20-30 worth of plastic electronics for $150-250 for that long.

They also hit it at the perfect time. Right before the PS3 came out, so everyone ended up buying 2 or 3 sets.