Music Game Genre On the Decline

After enjoying several years of popularity, music games seem to be drawing less and less interest from gamers lately. Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles have been conspicuously absent from a list of the 20 best-selling software titles in the past two months, and one report estimates that revenue from those games has dropped by almost half. Analyst Jesse Divnich suggests that there's no longer much room for dramatic improvements in game play, saying, "it would be erroneous to assume that any franchise or brand can grow unless it brings something new to the table. After a while, utility to the gamer will diminish and he/she will surely move on." Nevertheless, the companies are happy to continue to rely on DLC sales while working on new releases. Harmonix is showing off a trailer and a partial set list for The Beatles: Rock Band, and Neversoft has detailed a number of new features and tracks for Guitar Hero 5.

Re:Too much cost...

[joocemann]

I agree. You know what I saw, though? Guitar Hero: Aerosmith for $20 on sale at KMART!. Thats a full real quality GH guitar for 20 bucks plus you get w/e crapola Aerosmith songs come with it (please don't think I'm some Aerosmith fan troll, it is just kinda obvious that most people share my same opinion of their music since it was $20).

But, yes. Given a choice, I'd rather buy a new game than a second guitar, or a replacement guitar since it seems to wear out much sooner than expected when people are reeming songs on expert with it.

Re:Bagpipe Hero?

[Freetardo Jones]

Way to rip off The Onion [theonion.com].

Juris-my-diction? Read the article.

[tepples]

In the article [gamasutra.com], Matt Matthews at Gamasutra wrote:

Gamasutra has discovered that U.S. Guitar Hero/Rock Band revenues are down 49% year on year, as discounted hardware and over 20 SKUs flood the market.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

America isn't the only country.

The article is about sales in the United States.

Re:I'm surprised it lasted this long

[Chad Birch]

New Guitar Hero packages "yearly"? I think you missed a few, starting from World Tour:

Guitar Hero World Tour: October 26, 2008
Guitar Hero On Tour Decades: November 16, 2008
Guitar Hero Metallica: March 29, 2009
Guitar Hero On Tour Modern Hits: June 9, 2009
Guitar Hero Smash Hits: June 16, 2009
Guitar Hero 5: September 1, 2009
Band Hero: November 2009
Guitar Hero Van Halen: November/December 2009

That's 8 games in a little over one year.

Re:Sell out!!!

[NewWorldDan]

For those of you too young to remember, in 1993 MTV still played some music, and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was in heavy rotation at the time. In the early '90s, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, and what not were all very much MTV bands (and Kurt Cobain really hated that). The Who and Elvis Costello, not so much. :)