Super Rant #1

(Author's note: From time to time I plan on just laying my thoughts out on paper and releasing huge rants to the masses even if they have nothing to do with current events or my prior discussions. So as a holiday gift from me to all my readers, I give you the first " OWNAGE Super Rant")

Guitar Hero – A Great Franchise Milked Dry

The Iconic Controllers of
first few games.

Five colored buttons, a strum bar, and a whammy bar – Those three components made up the controller for one of the most widely recognized American developed, multi-console, 3^rd party videogames. Despite being a rhythm video game (akin to the family of games like Dance Dance Revolution), its sales have rivaled those of platform adventure games. The series created a huge culture shock increasing sales not only of videogames but of music, CDs, and physical instruments. Many people jumped into the craze (albeit to the dismay of real rockers with all these “posers” running around) and many games were successfully sold.

Now let’s break it down further:

The first Guitar Hero game was released by Activision on November 8, 2005 only for the PS2. Reception was superb and sales reached more than 4.5 million by the end of the year. (Problem? No. Keep looking).

Guitar Hero game play.

So then a sequel, Guitar Hero II, was spawned and reached out to X-box owners (PS2: November 6, 2006, X-Box 360 April 7, 2007). More successful than the first, it launched Guitar Hero into the mainstream world and was climbing the charts in popularity. A spinoff of GH II, Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80’s  served as an expansion game. Thus the culture was growing. (Too good to be true? Let’s see)

So what about Nintendo? Eager to cater to all three major companies, the release of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock was also the first to be available for the PS3 and the Nintendo WII and start the era of true multi-plaforming (this rant wouldn’t be here otherwise hahaha). GH: III was named one of the top selling games of 2007. Sealing the deal, Guitar Hero was everywhere by this point: On T-shirts, in everyone’s game room, and even being parodied on TV.

Sitting on top of a gold mine, Activision had nothing to worry about...until something occurred. Problem? Rock Band...A.K.A. Competition. Solution? Guitar Hero: World Tour.

RockBand mimicked the idea of Guitar Hero and incorporated the peripherals of Drums and Vocals and such to keep on par, Guitar Hero followed suit in their own way. Released between GH III and WT, Rock Band seemed to take the spot light. With a RB sequel planned for 2008, Activision had to hurry up and produce a game to compare. When both were released, they were almost evenly matched…EMPHASIS on Matched –  RB2 and GH:WT shared many songs in common such as Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” and Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”

At this point you’re probably thinking: “Wow, the series just keeps getting better and better. MC Hammer Bro., you must be crazy.” Well, this is where we reach the turning point…

2009, The Year It All Changed.

After the release of World Tour, it seems that Activision got greedy and wanted to shut the door on Rock Band. With the success of a Band Specific release in “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith” (which came out only a few months before World Tour), it seemed that the company was banking on releasing a ton spin of titles for every 1 mainstream edition. In the early half of 2009, Guitar Hero: Metallica and Guitar Hero: Smash Hits (a collection of songs from previous titles) and in the later half, Guitar Hero 5 was shadowed with the release of Guitar Hero: Van Halen. And not even a month later, Activision takes another leap of faith releasing the unanticipated DJ Hero. And let’s not forget the release of Band Hero only 1 more month after that. 

See what I’m getting at here? In the 4 years prior to 2009, only 6 Guitar Hero titles were released by Activision. And then in that year alone, Activision released 6 different Guitar Hero games.

Despite being an avid gamer and a fan
of the series, I personally have only 5
out of the 14 console games
--- Over Saturation

Overproduction. Oversaturation. Milking the franchise for every quick money making dollar they could get. And what was the result? Sure Activision tried to put itself back on good terms by waiting almost an entire year before releasing the 6^th main game of the series, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, but since then there have been no releases in over a year and no plans to make a new GH games in the foreseeable future.

Now, I'm not hating on the Guitar Hero series as a whole. I've always enjoyed the games and have become an avid player. I just think that the releases of games became too close together that the market became saturated and basically demand dropped significantly. Although Rock Band has done better in allowing plenty of time to occur between releases, I feel that both series have taken a hit due to all this overproduction. With Activision claiming that the series is merely on a break rather than complete only gives the slightest bit of hope that there will be subsequent games in the future.

Thanks for checking out my rants and feel free to throw down a few comments.

Rock on!

MC Hammer Bro.