With the September releases of both Guitar Hero 5 and The Beatles Rock Band, the music genre had picked up for a month. The former sold 499K units while the latter sold 595K units. In October, however, both games sold fewer than 100K copies. In addition, Activision's DJ Hero, which is clearly more niche in its appeal than a guitar game, sold 122K units. It should be noted though that DJ Hero only had five days of data in NPD's reporting period.
Nevertheless, as Broadpoint AmTech analyst Ben Schachter stated, it was certainly "another weak month for music genre games." Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities noted that Guitar Hero games generated $12 million, but that represents an 86% decline from last year. He added, "Total music game sales in October (including the newly-launched DJ Hero) totaled only $46 million, compared to $121 million a year ago. The decline in music genre sales was responsible for 60% of the year-over-year sales decline in October."
Schachter said he sees "little reason to expect a pick-up when we get our first look at ATVI's Band Hero sales with the November NPD data."
