Although the music games genre was clearly depressed in 2009, MTV Games still had some great sales off the Rock Band series and it looks like Rock Band 3 could very well be another hit with consumers when it launches later this year. MTV has produced some band specific SKUs like Beatles or the soon-to-be-released Green Day game, but Activision took it to a whole other level over the last few years with Guitar Hero.
MTV Games boss Scott Guthrie took the time to point out these ‘subtle’ differences between the Rock Band games and their closest competitor. “At E3, you'll see that Harmonix has spent two years on an engine upgrade and creating the next evolution of Rock Band," he remarked to MCV. "Unlike the other guy, we haven't been bringing a new game out every year. Sure, last year we had The Beatles but that was more about the content. This time we have lots of great, new music and some new consumer features you will find interesting."
Activision recently laid out plans to reduce the number of Guitar Hero releases in an investor conference call earlier this year, but it hardly makes up for the seven titles released between Rock Band 2’s release and Rock Band 3’s announcement [thanks Destructoid]. Though Rock Band has a grand total of 8 games released, that doesn’t even begin to touch the 21 games released under the Guitar Hero name.
4 Comments
May 20, 2010
im just disappointed that Bungie signed with them for a decade because it means i'll just have to add them to the list of developers to boycott. *shrug*
May 21, 2010
Guitar Hero has also been published on more platforms -- for instance, there is no DS version of Rock Band -- so it's understandable that more platforms means more titles. That's three of those seven titles right there.
I thought Beatles RB was a very good game, and I hope Green Day RB is a good game. But with Green Day RB and RB3 both coming out in 2010, that's already more games than the GH franchise is releasing this year. Twice as many, actually. :)
May 21, 2010
While it's true that Activision over saturates all their game titles eventually, MTV isn't a saint either. They've flooded the market with crappy tv shows for decades, the latest being the truly horrific Jersey Shore series.
June 6, 2010
Dan, don't forget about DJ Hero 2. That means at least 2 Activision Hero games this year.