Activision: Gamers Still Love Guitar Hero

Logan Westbrook

Transform, Roll Out, Etc
Feb 21, 2008
17,672
0
0
Activision: Gamers Still Love Guitar Hero


Guitar Hero franchise could have been handled better, says Activision's chief financial officer.

Despite the franchise being on hiatus at the moment, Activision's Thomas Tippl says that there is still a lot of love among gamers for Guitar Hero. He does admit however, that mistakes were made with the franchise, and that Activision has lessons to learn.

"Guitar Hero probably didn't receive the amount of nurturing and care that it needed to maintain [its] position [as a top-selling franchise]," Tippl said. He added that certain franchise elements, as well as Activision's relationship with music providers had caused problems, and that if and when the publisher brought the franchise back, it would have to take all of this into account.

While it's undeniable that Activision helped to make Guitar Hero a massive success, it was also widely blamed for running the entire music game genre into the ground by saturating the market with later, lower-quality Guitar Hero updates. If Activision does bring the series back, it's going to have to adopt a pretty different business model. Personally, I'd like to see fewer boxed releases - maybe one every couple of years, if that - and much greater online support. A unified music library - perhaps even including downloads for legacy games - wouldn't hurt either.

Source: Gamasutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/37106/Activision_CFO_Guitar_Hero_Lacked_Nurturing_Care.php]




Permalink
 
Dec 14, 2009
15,526
0
0
I got bored of the franchise after the 3rd one.

Mostly because they were really running out of awesome and iconic tracks to stick in the game.

It started to go down hill when they started adding other freakin' instruments.
 

New Troll

New member
Mar 26, 2009
2,984
0
0
I still love Guitar Hero though I honestly don't play as much anymore. But I feel it wasn't Guitar Hero that ruined the franchise as much as the other Hero games. I work retail and still have tons of DJ Hero and DJ Hero 2's I can't get rid of at any price. And believe me, I've tried! Next step, give them away free with other purchases. Only other thing I can think of...
 

Macgyvercas

Spice & Wolf Restored!
Feb 19, 2009
6,103
0
0
Daystar Clarion said:
I got bored of the franchise after the 3rd one.

Mostly because they were really running out of awesome and iconic tracks to stick in the game.
But they have yet to do Stairway to Heaven.
 

Riobux

New member
Apr 15, 2009
1,955
0
0
To be honest, I'd like to see a different developer. Neversoft just isn't good as a developer.
 

Mr.Squishy

New member
Apr 14, 2009
1,990
0
0
I would post nothing but a guffawing laugh - or perhaps an inflammatory comment regarding Activision, but racking up two warnings in a week? That's SCANDALOUS.
 
Dec 14, 2009
15,526
0
0
Macgyvercas said:
Daystar Clarion said:
I got bored of the franchise after the 3rd one.

Mostly because they were really running out of awesome and iconic tracks to stick in the game.
But they have yet to do Stairway to Heaven.
They would be a bad idea. I would never play any other track :D
 

Smooth Operator

New member
Oct 5, 2010
8,162
0
0
Just let it be, we all know how it should have been done and they know very well why they pulled that billion titles per year bullshit.

And if they start it again this will only get worse.
 

wooty

Vi Britannia
Aug 1, 2009
4,252
0
0
Guitar hero got old for me after it became the perfect way to effectively kill a party. Why do people feel the need to whip out the xbox at A PARTY?! It defeats the point
 

Mouse_Crouse

New member
Apr 28, 2010
491
0
0
New Troll said:
I still love Guitar Hero though I honestly don't play as much anymore. But I feel it wasn't Guitar Hero that ruined the franchise as much as the other Hero games. I work retail and still have tons of DJ Hero and DJ Hero 2's I can't get rid of at any price. And believe me, I've tried! Next step, give them away free with other purchases. Only other thing I can think of...
I do agree with most of this. I still pull out my guitars and play Guitar Hero 5 from time to time. But I do think that that absolutely handled it completely wrong. Releasing so many titles only splits the online community up. And does indeed saturate the market. Even a 'die hard' guitar game enthusiast like myself couldn't bring myself to purchase the newest Warriors of Rock. Was just too many all the time. Having a setup like Rock Band was much better. A singular game with all the available songs, and tons of DLC is definitely the way to go.
 

kebab4you

New member
Jan 3, 2010
1,451
0
0
Oh both you and me Logan know that they will have AT LEAST 1 game a year per mainstream franchise they own. Out over that, I was never a fan to begin with, the time I spent pressing the plastic buttons I could learn to play a real guitar.
 

Dorkmaster Flek

New member
Mar 13, 2008
262
0
0
Logan Westbrook said:
Personally, I'd like to see fewer boxed releases - maybe one every couple of years, if that - and much greater online support. A unified music library - perhaps even including downloads for legacy games - wouldn't hurt either.
They have that already. It's called Rock Band, and it's been the superior series in almost every single way since day one. If Activision decides to bring GH back, they're going to need to compete with a keyboard instrument, vocal harmonies, and the ability to play a real guitar, plus a way for any band to get their music into the game a la the Rock Band Network. GH Tunes was a nice idea, but it isn't going to cut it. I have no doubt the decline of music games helped push them towards the decision to shelve the series, but I can't help also think that they took one look at Rock Band in its current form and said "Fuck it."
 

Gralian

Me, I'm Counting
Sep 24, 2008
1,789
0
0
I still love rhythm games. Not Guitar Hero specifically.

While i still have GH3 and the guitar controller, i get my rhythm fixes from a free to play game called Osu! which is PC game that involves you hitting beats and sliders by clicking your mouse on the circles on screen. Since the community is constantly updating it with more and more beatmaps both ranked and unranked it constantly feels like a fresh experience, not to mention the music being very international ranging from typical J-Pop to western music like Nickleback and Katy Perry to even Russian music. Guitar hero is very narrow minded and only focuses on "Nineties to noughties pop-rock", which makes it remarkably dull by comparison. Guitar Hero is going to have to pull something out of the hat to make me want to play that over Osu!. I'd also like to see something more solo-focused from rhythm games. The beauty of Osu! is that it encourages you to keep trying songs to improve your score, rank and level, something done by yourself where spectators may or may not watch. There is a multiplayer versus to see who can get the higher score, but that's it. The bulk of the experience is on the single player. I know it only makes sense for something band-oriented to focus on multiplayer, but i feel it alienates those of us who just want to play alone or don't have anything to form a band with. You don't have to ride a shallow mechanic on being more than the sum of its parts by adding in three other shallow mechanics; innovate a little!
 

Dogstile

New member
Jan 17, 2009
5,093
0
0
I loved guitar hero.

Which is exactly why I was confused when everyone started going on about its drum sets.
 

Frostbite3789

New member
Jul 12, 2010
1,778
0
0
dogstile said:
I loved guitar hero.

Which is exactly why I was confused when everyone started going on about its drum sets.
The drums were fine. Until they stopped working for no reason. Not registering any kind of input. I even eventually opened them up and nothing was physically wrong, seemingly. So, I'd have to say crap quality.

OT: They over-saturated the crap out of the market. I'm waiting for them to apologize and realize their mistake. They already tried to blame DJ Hero...for some reason? If they don't realize past-mistakes, they'll continue to make them. It's starting to happen to CoD.

The first step is admitting you have a problem, ActiBlizzard.
 

dimensional

New member
Jun 13, 2011
1,274
0
0
I think Guitar Hero has had its day Activision killed it by milking it to death and the only reason they are sorry is because they have lost a cash cow franchise, unfortunately they have also hurt Rockband their (imo) superior competitor product.

People have been burnt out, now if some one released a program that somehow allowed you to rip a song from one of your cds and be able to play it as a track on GH or/and Rockband I think there would be a huge resurge of interest even if this is unlikely to happen due to technical limitations and the fact they would not be able to sell us anywhere near as much DLC or new but hardly changed games.
 

Waaghpowa

Needs more Dakka
Apr 13, 2010
3,073
0
0
They need to get better licenses for music.

I.e Guitar Hero: Judas Priest.