The vice president of Activision developer relations, Dan Winters, has just said in an interview that the franchise of Guitar Hero is just on a break and hasn’t been done away with yet. He told the reporters that the company was simply releasing their products out of the vault and they will sustain the franchise and that the brand will not end, only there will not be a new title the next year. These comments from Winters have come as a surprise for many as Activision had declared in their quarterly earnings statement that the company had ended the franchise as it did not sell very well as compared to other music games.
The decision to disband the game had not caused any big surprises for the fans as the music games sector had not been performing well for the last few years. Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush, had stated in a note to the investors in January that the industry was suffering because the interest in the music gaming industry had virtually disintegrated in recent times. He cited figures that said the sales of games reached a high point in 2008 with sales of $1.7 billion. However, it had steadily declined since then as the sales hit $900 million in 2009 and then dropped to under $30 million in 2010.
Patcher wrote to investors that the sales of video games had grown by 81% from 2005 to 2008 and the music segment had accounted for a third of that growth. However, the industry went down by 14.9% from 2008 to 2010 and this time around, the music genre accounted for more than 80% of the drop. The one time success of the Guitar Hero franchise might be the reason that Activision has decided to keep the brand.
