Activision Pulls the Plug on Guitar Hero Franchise

[Madmanonfire]

Good. Guitar Hero ceased being able to compete with Rock Band years ago.

That makes about as much sense as LBP being able to compete with Mario. Try again. (Hint: Other way around)

OT: GH6 was the perfect swan song for the franchise. If it weren't for oversaturation, GH could've been an amazing thing. Instead, it's just a great thing. Hopefully RB dies as well, as it's still a few years away from being able to match GH3, let alone GH6. We don't need such a downgrade continuing in GH's place.

rock band 3 is better than any other music game. due to the fact that i can actually play a guitar... so no it isnt a downgrade. better tech. better(and more) songs. i think rockband has some life left.

You're saying it's a better "game" because of the tutorial that's apart from the "game"? Great logic.
- Better tech? Nope. Gameplay and mechanics are superior in GH6.
- Correction: More songs, not better songs. The RB3 on-disk setlist is similar to GH5. You'll have to pay extra for all of the good songs on DLC, and even those often have questionable charts. Provided you can see what you're trying to play, with all the blinding background crap in the way.

where did i say aything about a tutorial? and yes, a REAL GUITAR peripheral is better tech. the drums and mic are also better. And the devil and shit was much more distracting than a few people on stage. and i think the charts are fine. there as close as the real song that you can get with five buttons.

Bahahaha.... this is funny.
- You referred to pro-mode, which is pretty much a tutorial.
- And what about the regular guitar? You know, the one with the square frets and the silent strum bar? Let's not forget about that.
- Who said anything about distracting? I was talking about blinding stuff. The video effects, lighting effects, see-through tracks, and bright color overdrive effects are great at hiding notes.
- It's good that you think the charts are fine. That's all that matters, really.

 

[wastedyouth89]

Honestly, I'm pissed about two things.
1. They cut this with very little DLC on WoR, especially leaving us with a mediocre track pack to finish things off. A bunch of second hand Marilyn Manson songs, some Children of Bodom that I don't know well, and Black Label Society, a band who many people know but few know songs by. Would it have been so hard to release some Reel Big Fish, Type O Negative, Bring Me The Horizon, Mastodon, or some Biffy Clyro?
2. I can't use my drum set on Rock Band because the Guitar Hero set is superior and can't be brought down to that level.

 

[Ice Car]

Oh wow. This actually made the news in Hawaii. I'm amazed as it's the first time video games have been mentioned for a long while...

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

Good. Guitar Hero ceased being able to compete with Rock Band years ago.

That makes about as much sense as LBP being able to compete with Mario. Try again. (Hint: Other way around)

OT: GH6 was the perfect swan song for the franchise. If it weren't for oversaturation, GH could've been an amazing thing. Instead, it's just a great thing. Hopefully RB dies as well, as it's still a few years away from being able to match GH3, let alone GH6. We don't need such a downgrade continuing in GH's place.

...what?

Rock Band games outsell GH games pretty regularly and the public attitude toward them really seems to be much more positive, especially after GH tried to add the other Rock Band instruments, which I think many took as a sign of the series being behind the times. Compare this to Mario and LBP, which, aside from being quite different games conceptually (while Rock Band and GH are virtually identical), are orders of magnitude apart in sales and in brand recognition.

And I think an awful lot of people would disagree about Rock Band not matching GH. I feel like Rock Band succeeded spectacularly where GH had started to fail: making a good party game. Probably the main reason the genre sold so well for a time was that people like to play these games relatively casually with friends. GH tried to cater to the more hardcore players and that move was out of step with both the direction the genre was heading and its original intent ("have fun playing a simplified guitar even though you can't play a real one" not "achieve feats that are arguably harder than on a real guitar"). Also, let's not forget that while this is the death of the GH franchise, many of the people who STARTED the franchise are working at Harmonix now anyway.

1. Game sales =\= quality. I just decided to pick two random games for a comparison in gameplay quality, so sue me.
2. Party game? There's a mode for that in GH.
And if it's not okay for GH to cater to those with more skill, then why is it okay for RB to include Pro mode? Sounds like a much more hardcore-focused direction to me.
That second paragraph hurt to read, so I don't want to comment on it too much. If the intent is moving towards more hardcore audience, then of course the casual franchise would make for a better party game. The former isn't trying to be a party game as much.
And it's good that the people who started the franchise are with Harmonix now. Their absence after GH2 was the best thing to happen to the franchise, oddly enough.

1. No, but when we're talking about competing franchises, sales are what matter. The one that undersells loses regardless of whether it's a better game. My point wasn't one of quality, I was just pointing out that GH's been on the losing side for a while now, so this isn't particularly surprising news.

2. You're right, the inclusion of a harder mode in RB and a party mode in GH completely invalidates my point. If you honestly can't see that RB is trying to cater more toward those who want a good party game than GH is, I don't know how to help you - it's pretty clear from the difficulty curve to the song selection to the art used in the games that they're approaching the genre in pretty different ways.

The rest: That was exactly my point. I'm not saying that GH doesn't succeed at what it sets out to do. In fact, I'm saying that its success at doing what it sets out to do is exactly why the series hasn't sold as well. The issue is what it sets out to do in the first place.

Personally, I didn't think the GH series aged well at all. The song selection tends to be pretty good (though tending to be less diverse than RB, which tends to be better at grabbing people with differing tastes by including a little of everything), but everything else just feels less well-integrated. The art direction varies between seeming like a blatant copy of RB or seeming like the game is trying too hard to seem "hardcore". I much prefer the sleeker RB look: I think it's more likely to get casual people into the game at parties and puts the emphasis on the gameplay rather than on how awesome a glorified text menu looks. Overall, RB just feels to me like GH's more mature older brother to me.

More than anything though, I think it's just the fact that Harmonix beat them to the multi-instrument thing. Once GH did it, I think the majority of people just thought of it as attempting to copy and catch up to RB and that always leaves a sour taste.

 

[Shale_Dirk]

Bahahaha.... this is funny.
- You referred to pro-mode, which is pretty much a tutorial.
- And what about the regular guitar? You know, the one with the square frets and the silent strum bar? Let's not forget about that.

Soooooo:

Pro-mode is a tutorial, separate from the game;
But it's actually a mode that lets you play a real guitar in the game;
But it's not comparable to a real guitar?

Dude, what the hell are you on about? You sound like the worst kind of fanboy, just grasping at straws.

 

[Shale_Dirk]

2. Party game? There's a mode for that in GH.
And if it's not okay for GH to cater to those with more skill, then why is it okay for RB to include Pro mode? Sounds like a much more hardcore-focused direction to me.

Because then real musicians can pick up the game and play without having to figure out a five-button 1-dimensional translation of a 2 dimensional instrument, or be able to play keyboards.

Pro-mode is not just a 'new level of hardcore'. It's completely on par with Harmonix's goal from day one of branching together video games and music. It allows a more direct translation, and for those who want to learn how to play an instrument, a much more fun way to learn.

As opposed to super-fast strumming with the clickity-clackety of a GH controller.

 

[MonocleClaire]

About time. Guitar Hero's been stumbling along like a drunken giraffe for the past few years.

 

[Madmanonfire]

Bahahaha.... this is funny.
- You referred to pro-mode, which is pretty much a tutorial.
- And what about the regular guitar? You know, the one with the square frets and the silent strum bar? Let's not forget about that.

Soooooo:

Pro-mode is a tutorial, separate from the game;
But it's actually a mode that lets you play a real guitar in the game;
But it's not comparable to a real guitar?

Dude, what the hell are you on about? You sound like the worst kind of fanboy, just grasping at straws.

You're putting words in my mouth just to get an insult in. Sad.
Pro-mode teaches you how to play songs. Then you can play along to the song, which is just like in real life with music and without the flashy images. It's just like a real guitar with buttons. Let's hope your next post has something intelligent in it.

2. Party game? There's a mode for that in GH.
And if it's not okay for GH to cater to those with more skill, then why is it okay for RB to include Pro mode? Sounds like a much more hardcore-focused direction to me.

Because then real musicians can pick up the game and play without having to figure out a five-button 1-dimensional translation of a 2 dimensional instrument, or be able to play keyboards.

Pro-mode is not just a 'new level of hardcore'. It's completely on par with Harmonix's goal from day one of branching together video games and music. It allows a more direct translation, and for those who want to learn how to play an instrument, a much more fun way to learn.

As opposed to super-fast strumming with the clickity-clackety of a GH controller.

You're making it sound like learning 5 buttons is difficult for a "real musician".

And once you know a song, there's little point in playing the game when it's more rewarding and better to play it in real life. Pro-mode is not perfect. I say it's not really part of the game because you're doing almost the exact same thing as you would in real life, just in a different "setting", as opposed to playing 5 button charts along with a song.

It's better than super-fast strumming with a silent strum bar. Much easier to lose track of how much you've strummed.

Well, that one was a little better, but not good enough. I'm done with this thread.

~From a real musician, not a silly fanboy

 

[Double A]

"Let's milk a franchise for a 'new' game every year and then be surprised when people don't buy it any more!"

 

[Electrogecko]

Holy crap. Guitar Hero.....gone?.....

 

[Shale_Dirk]

You're putting words in my mouth just to get an insult in. Sad.
Pro-mode teaches you how to play songs. Then you can play along to the song, which is just like in real life with music and without the flashy images. It's just like a real guitar with buttons. Let's hope your next post has something intelligent in it.

I'm done with this thread.

~From a real musician, not a silly fanboy

A) No, pro-mode tutorials teach you how to play songs. In the in-game pro mode, you are actually playing the song, on a real guitar. It seems as though you are completely oblivious to the fact that pro-mode uses a REAL guitar. ie:

Not simply the multi-button version that you are so vehemently opposed to.

B)Yeah, it turns out that when you learn to play a song on a guitar (even in a game), you might play it in real life. Again, you're ignoring the fact that, that was the whole point of pro-mode in the first place. The in-game playing along of the songs on a real guitar is a training tool for budding musicians, and for those that want a more interactive way to pick out difficult lines in songs through methods other than tabs.

C)And seriously, "I'm being corrected so I'm leaving the conversation now"?

-From a real musician who doesn't feel the need to inform everyone that he's a real musician when my validity is being questioned.