Activision Blizzard's Guitar Hero 5 just launched this week, kicking off this fall's "battle of the bands," as MTV and Harmonix are set to launch The Beatles Rock Band next week. The Beatles Rock Band is getting a lot of tremendous buzz, including in mainstream outlets like The New York Times, but Guitar Hero arguably still carries greater mind share with the general public than Rock Band. It sure will be interesting to see which title fares better this holiday.
EEDAR previously predicted that Guitar Hero 5 will outsell Beatles by 2:1, but now that Guitar Hero 5 is out, it's possible to get some early reads on sales performance. Arvind Bhatia of Sterne Agee said that according to his channel checks with retail, Guitar Hero 5 would appear to be meeting expectations so far. He added, however, that making comparisons to last year would be difficult.
Nevertheless, he noted that while the “game only” version appears to be selling ahead of last year, the guitar kit (game + guitar) is down "at least 50% year-over-year." Given the state of the economy and the softening of the music genre this year, expectations were already lower, so this is not a major surprise. It's also worth pointing out that last year a full band kit for Guitar Hero World Tour was released simultaneously with the game's launch, whereas this year a full band kit won't hit stores until Band Hero launches in November. Guitar Hero 5 should get a boost in the near term from solid review scores and the limited offer for a free copy of Guitar Hero Van Halen.
