The death knell of Guitar Hero seems to have been premature, according to the backpedaling of Activision. Dan Winters, Activision vice president of developer relations (translation, PR douche), said that the Guitar Hero franchise is simply on hiatus. Hmmm, guess I didn't need to make that post about the game being discontinued months ago. Shit, we all got it wrong.
"Actually, just to clarify, we're just putting Guitar Hero on hiatus, we're not ending it...We're releasing products out of the vault--we'll continue to sustain the channel, the brand won't go away. We're just not making a new one for next year, that's all." And if you like quotes, you can compare that to the one they made in February: "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."
That confusion comes from a touch of premature valuation. A month after killing the line, market researcher NPD reported that Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock was the bestselling game released in the U.S. since 1995. It's gross sales are $831 million since its launch in 2007. Also, rival developer Ubisoft announced last month that it plans to launch a music game of its own later this year called Rocksmith, which unlike Guitar Hero and Rock Band, promises to put a real guitar in the hands of players. Oh, and all those positions I mentioned that were terminated when they closed down the division? They're still gone.
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