Friday, February 15, 2008

How To Kill A Franchise

Activision has just unveiled a new "Guitar Hero" video game focusing on the rock band Aerosmith, taking the billion-dollar franchise in a new direction - a bad one.

"Guitar Hero: Aerosmith" will arrive in stores this summer, a surprise to many analysts and fans who had expected the next title to come out closer to the year-end holiday shopping season. And also not be based on a dinosaur of a rock band who has been largely irrelevant for the last decade.

Aerosmith is the top-selling American rock band of all time, selling over 66.5 million albums in the United States alone, the likely rational for the designers to hatch the game. It will feature about 30 Aerosmith songs as well as others from various acts that have opened for the band. The price has not yet been set. And how can you put a price on that, with the promise of Aerosmith, and bands like Cheap Trick, KISS, and Ted Nugent?

The focus on a single band marks a new twist for the franchise, whose three main titles featured dozens of artists spanning classic rock, grunge, metal, punk and other rock subgenres. By spotlighting a single band, the company foolishly thinks it has also come up with a way to counter rival music game "Rock Band" from Electronic Arts, Activision's top competitor. I predict it will be the lowest selling game in group. There's easily two dozen other bands that would be more interesting to listen to and play, but clearly none of them are beyond relevant or as hard up as Aerosmith. I guess that's what you do after 14 Superbowl halftime shows.

Yeah, that times 30...what fun

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