Why Guitar Hero died

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 11 February, 2011

"The brand lost its relevance."

As the dust settles on Activision's decision to put an end to its world-famous peripheral-based music franchise Guitar Hero and the difficult work of sacking those who helped create it begins, one question remains: where did it all go wrong?

Only three years ago Guitar Hero shot through the $1 billion revenue mark – in the US alone.

Now, in what can only be described as a spectacular fall from grace, Guitar Hero is no more. Why? Why did Guitar Hero die?

To accuse Activision of milking the franchise dry with multiple games launched too close together may be an obvious start, but according to leading industry analysts it's a perfectly valid one.

"By 2007 Guitar Hero was available for most platforms and Activision continued to stripmine the franchise," M2 Research analyst Billy Pidgeon told Eurogamer.

"It is relatively easy to prepare iterative versions of a music and rhythm game once the formula has been set, and this dynamic facilitated the brand's over-exposure. In 2009 Activision released five separate SKUs of Guitar Hero and the brand essentially lost its relevance."

A damning verdict indeed – but it is one shared by many who are trying to make sense of Guitar Hero's demise.

"Guitar Hero was a victim of its success," said Wedbush Securities' Michael Pachter. "The game was incredibly well-conceived, the peripherals were great, and the music offering was deep and broad. All of those factors led to unprecedented success, and each contributed to its demise."

For Pachter, the fact gamers could play new Guitar Hero games with the peripherals they already owned proved to be the killer blow.

"Once people bought the band kit, for example, they didn't feel compelled to upgrade, as the one they bought was high quality and did the job well," he said. "Once people bought a game, they had 60 - 80 songs to master, and few mastered all of the songs offered.

"Thus, when a new version was released, most consumers did not feel the need to buy it, since they still had 40 – 50 songs remaining to play from last year's version."

One analyst who cast's Activision's role in a brighter light is EEDAR's Jesse Divnich. For him, "nothing went wrong with Guitar Hero" and there was nothing Activision could have done to prevent its decline.

"Much like most entertainment products, consumers tend to get their fill quickly. There is a reason why most successful movies rarely go past their third-iteration.

"When the first Guitar Hero was sold, the time clock of its success and ultimate demise started and there wasn't a single strategy Activision could have implemented to hinder it. If Activision hadn't flooded the market, someone else would have, and the state of the music genre in 2011 would have been unchanged.

"There is absolutely nothing Activision nor anyone could have done to save the music genre. We should remember Guitar Hero for what it was, not where it's at now."

Gaming Insights director Nick Williams is more pragmatic – Guitar Hero died because gamers stopped buying it. "Activision's decision to cancel Guitar Hero and DJ Hero is probably a surprise to many gamers, but the momentum shift away from music games has been in the works for a few years now," he said.

"Trended data from Ipsos OTX's GamePlan Insights tracking study support the idea that music related games are becoming increasingly risky investments. The percentage of active gamers who like to play music games 'a lot' has dropped steadily over the last two years (from 38 per cent in Q1 2009 to 28 per cent in Q1 2011), which corresponds to measurable decreases in purchase interest for each new Guitar Hero release.

"During the same time, the incidence of active gamers who like to play shooter games 'a lot' has increased from 40 per cent to 47 per cent, with Call of Duty leading the charge."

With the axe ready to fall on DJ Hero developer Freestyle Games and the promise of 500 job cuts across Activision's gargantuan network already biting, Guitar Hero's death feels final.

But, like with the best superheroes, dead doesn't always mean dead.

"I wouldn't classify Guitar Hero as 'dead', but rather hibernating'," Divnich said. "It may take three to five years, and likely a whole new generation of consoles, but I see a possibility of a short revival in the future."

Pidgeon agrees. "It is possible that Guitar Hero will return, but a re-launch would have to be managed on a far smaller scale. Production costs would have to be minimized to enable profits on unit sales in the hundreds of thousands rather than in the millions."

Pachter's conclusion? "The franchise can support sales at the $200 million level annually, so it will still generate profits, but with license fees and manufacturing costs, margins are not that great, and certainly not enough to keep 200 - 250 people employed working on a new version each year."

Hero developers across the world no doubt know that better than most.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (59) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • NotSoSlim #1 1 year ago

    Rock Band will next, over saturation simples

  • SeesThroughAll #2 1 year ago

    "lost its relevance" = milked to death

  • pauleyc #3 1 year ago

    "For Pachter, the fact gamers could play new Guitar Hero games with the peripherals they already owned proved to be the killer blow."

    That's an exec's wet dream - renewing franchises with proprietary peripherals where the next generation is incompatible with the previous one.

  • neonxaos #4 1 year ago

    Honestly, Harmonix still makes the best versions of these games. We don't need two separate franchises.

  • Golgo #5 1 year ago

    Interesting on how the milking/over-saturation argument - which seems commonsensical not only to industry experts but ordinary gamers too - seems completely lost on Activision, especially when it comes to the promise of the accelerating release schedule and diversification of the COD 'portfolio'.

  • MiniAmin #6 1 year ago

    Who remembers how it was heralded as the next step in music's evolution? There was a time when people thought that Guitar Hero would make a deep and lasting impact on the way in which music was delivered to consumers. It was a massive success, but it could've been even more successful.

    Let's see if Activision learn from this (hint, they won't).

  • Yuroko #7 1 year ago

    Milked to the point that only coffee mate came out of Guitar hero's teats.

  • paketep #8 1 year ago

    This article it's WAY too long. It could have been written in just three words: Bobby fucking Kotick.

    Also, it's bad enough that you dedicate news posts to the hack Pachter. Let's not also cite him in articles. He doesn't deserve it, and EG readers have suffered enough of his BS already.

  • Fab4 #9 1 year ago

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDpRJErD5Uo

  • afray #10 1 year ago

    "There is a reason why most successful movies rarely go past their third-iteration."

    Oh so we should have had only three or four FPS games before everyone got tired of it?

  • superstu1337 #11 1 year ago

    2012 - Call of Duty canned after MW3 destroyed by superior Battlefield 3. Outsold by 6:1!

    We can only dream right?

  • patootik #12 1 year ago

    Never bought it, never liked it, never understood it's appeal as anything more than a niche product. There were always plenty of other good games to play and plenty of opportunities to play music on actual instruments to warrant getting into Guitar Hero or Rock Band.

    Anyway I appreciate that a lot of people got a lot of enjoyment out of these games and I find it sad that it had to die out in this way.

    In 2 year will the same be said about COD?

    Activision really need to start diversifying their output.

    EDIT: Oh yes, sorry where are my manners, fuck Kotick!
    Edited by patootik at 11/02/11 @ 11:02

  • AcidSnake #13 1 year ago

    IMO it was because it went from "Best hard rock of the century" to "Time life presents Best of 2008 alternative emo"...

    GH1 was great because it had so many classic songs in it, and the ones you didn't recognise were great anyway...

  • slippysloppy #14 1 year ago

    Patcher knows shit, the man is a disgrace to the industry he comments on and is easily bullied by the large software companies.

    The reason the rhythm action game has suffered is because it was a phase, a fad and one that the software companies ended prematurely by the incessant release of new software and peripherals. Not only did you have yearly releases (more if you include the band specific version) but you had Rock Band and Guitar Hero competing for the same pound.

    Rock Band's approach was to improve and increase the quality of the game, whilst increasing the cost and quality of the peripherals. Where as Guitar Hero's approach was to churn out more games of ever decreasing quality. When what we needed was 1 new game every 2 years where we could dig out the peripherals we already owned. The child known as DLC could also have killed of the parent.

    I think for most people who bought one game and loved it, bought a sequel and loved that too. Then when it came to the next sequel realised they'd not played the last two for ages and didn't purchase again. No matter how good the updates, all new iterations became more of the same.

  • Gambit1977 #15 1 year ago

    Over saturation.
    Plain and simple.

  • Lebowski #16 1 year ago

    "So bye-bye dear Guitar Hero pie;
    Kotick sucked your nipples, 'til your nipples were dry.
    In my hard drive, there's still some songs to try;
    Singing Pat Benatar as I cry; Pat Benatar as I cry."

  • metalangel #17 1 year ago

    Much as I don't like Pachter, he's right.

  • lordofthedunce #18 1 year ago

    Acti simply ignored consumers' obvious annoyance of constant updates. Yes, GH was still selling quite well for a long time but people were fairly vocal about it being milked to death and finally something gave.

  • kinky_mong #19 1 year ago

    It died because a different dev team body snatched the name, and everyone knew that Rock Band was the real Guitar Hero franchise.

    Well by everyone you mean "everyone with a keen interest in games". To less obsessive gamers they would just see the name Guitar Hero and assume its a sequel by the same people.

    I feel most sorry for Harmonix in all of this as their baby has been milked dry, and their better quality series can't help but be affected by most consumers being fatigued with music games.

  • Murton #20 1 year ago

    Pachter: "music on offer was broad and deep" now either he has the strangest taste in music of anyone I've ever heard of or he played a very different game to me. The track lists were obviously selected by comittee in an attempt to include something for everyone, which mean using music charts. The result being that those who prefer Metal to chart tat got about 4 tracks, not 80 and had to wait for the likes of GH Metallica and Warriors of Rock to get a decent selection of tracks that they want to play. There are some bands and songs covered in GH games that I absolutely despite and flat out refuse to play as I don't want to hear them let alone play them, often halting my career progress, RB however lets me play whatever I want in career, including DLC and tracks from previous games so that's cool.

    To put it short, GH did get quite a few things wrong and it's incredibly likely that some of these came into play to kill the franchise, not just the diminishing returns of over-saturation.

  • Dyason #21 1 year ago

    I had GH 2,3, WT and 5. To be honest WT and 5 got so little play from me because I moved to Rock Band I never wanted another GH game. The fact I couldn't play previous songs was a big thing against it. I love the fact that even though I'm playing Rock Band 3 I have (nearly) all my previous songs there too. At the end of the day it's about the music and GH never sat right with me for buying the tracks online. Bring on more Rock Band which is still innovating and supports songs from previous games.

  • CloisterBlack #22 1 year ago

    It's 1983 all over again

  • arcam #23 1 year ago

    I really think the peripheral-based guitar game would have died out by this amount of time anyway. I know people won't like me saying it but it had all the marks of a fad, and fads don't last. I suspect people who think Rock Band will benefit from this in any meaningful way are going to be sorely disappointed.

    I actually think Activision were smart to release as many games as, because they maximised the profit they could get while the game was still hot. It was always gonna die after a few years anyway, so grab the money while you can.

  • callum9999 #24 1 year ago

    I agree with the person who said it was no-ones fault. 5 different skus in a year? So what - they are mainly just song packs. Due to the very nature of music, different people will like different ones so they produced multiple versions to suit more people. Why does there being a lot of releases make people not want to buy them?

    The only problem was each game is good enough to last. Once you own one of them, for most people, the dozens of songs are good enough. They might buy 1 or 2 more games, but once you've bought it you've generally finished with the franchise.

  • mechamonkey #25 1 year ago

    I bought 2,3 and WT, then I bought Rock band and used my WT kit. I've never played a guitar hero game again since, my Rock Band (1,2 and 3) library was just far too good in comparison.

  • Wendelius #26 1 year ago

    For me, 2 simple reasons:

    - Saturation: Why on earth would I want to buy even 2 (let alone 4) brand new GH games a year? I bought GH2 (loved it), GH3 (meh), GH5 (ended up not playing it much but party mode was a good addition) and that's about it. I ignored all the rest.
    - Rock Band was just more popular in my household

    Wendelius

  • Jamiesan #27 1 year ago

    I think the fact that RB has a much more diverse library, it's the perfect party game, whereas GH was more about hard-to-play songs and high scores - is equally as telling as the oversaturation of the market. GH just isn't as social.

    MattDamon: I like your films, but RB3 does have some (limited) musical education. I got the keyboard for it (haven't played since school) and it has modes where you can learn/brush up on chords, scales etc. Also individual song trainers where you can practise sections over and over, I hear it's the same for pro guitar, but don't have one.

    It upsets me that RB3 is such a great game, yet the publisher has done such a piss-poor job of publisizing what it can do, and actually getting it onto shop shelves! Everything I learned about RB3 was from vids Harmonix put out, not the guys paid to advertise it!

  • Lee_Morris #28 1 year ago

    Bas start to the article. Of course Harmonix created GH!

  • midnight_walker #29 1 year ago

    250 people to update guitar hero once every five minutes? Is that a joke?

  • Toothball #30 1 year ago

    Gamers' reluctance to upgrade instruments is certainly keeping most HMVs free from having excess storage space.

    I do find myself upgrading my instruments to some degree each time they come up with a new Rock Band, this time more notably needing two completely new instruments. I reckon Activision would have loved to have me as a customer, but I followed Harmonix instead.

  • kar #31 1 year ago

    It's so cliche to beat up on Pachter. But he makes it so damn easy.

    Basically, if I had a penny for everytime Pachter said something that made it clear his head was jammed up his own arse...well, I'd be richer than any of his clients following his investment guidance.

  • bratmandu #32 1 year ago

    I think maybe people just realised that plastic instruments suck balls. They should have developed a game with a real stringed guitar that actually would teach you how to play for real. It could be done, if kinnect can recognise your voice, in fact even endwar could take voice commands through the mic, they could definately recognise notes.

    ** negged for that? Ok sorry plastic instruments are cool and you definately don't look like a prick when playing with them.
    Edited by bratmandu at 11/02/11 @ 14:47

  • Optyk #33 1 year ago

    I wouldn't be suprised if CoD goes down this path aswell.

  • Wahoffelmadenga #34 1 year ago

    I think this link says it all.

    And I completely disagree with Pachter; I do NOT want to buy a new peripheral every time a new game comes out.

  • HL706 #35 1 year ago

    2014 - Rock Band 4 is released to worldwide critical acclaim and makes a killing.
    1 month later - Guitar Hero 71,819 is announced.

    Mark my words ;)

  • arcam #36 1 year ago

    People seem to forget that between Oct 2008 and Oct 2010 there were five Rock Band games released.

    5 Rock Band games in 2 years.

    OK, lets get back to blaming Guitar Hero for milking the game.
    Edited by arcam at 11/02/11 @ 12:03

  • coolbritannia #37 1 year ago

    Funny, I've been playing guitar for 15 years, and owned 10 guitars, 5 of which are absolutely the best you can get, and I don't feel the music genre's dying...and oh yeah, looking forward to Battlefield taking COD's crown this year...

  • kingcrowbar #38 1 year ago

    I love this part of the wikipeda article.

    Regardless, after releasing 25 different SKUs (between games and bundle packages) in 2009, Activision has opted to reduce the number of 10 SKUs in 2010, recognizing the music game genre was not as profitable as it once was.

    25 in one year!

  • FortysixterUK #39 1 year ago

    QUOTE:"I wouldn't classify Guitar Hero as 'dead', but rather hibernating'," Divnich said. "It may take three to five years, and likely a whole new generation of consoles, but I see a possibility of a short revival in the future.""

    Drop dead ! I don't want another xbox or PS thankyou very much, just program the ones you've got more efficiently, thus getting more out of them, thus meaning no more console releases. EVER.

  • Byzanite #40 1 year ago

    Much like most entertainment products, consumers tend to get their fill quickly. There is a reason why most successful movies rarely go past their third-iteration.
    What/when was the Fifa Football game....?

  • PhoenixMDK #41 1 year ago

    Hang on, *everyone* said Activision was running the Guitar Hero franchise into the ground when they announced 5 SKUs in one year. Who exactly is struggling to work out what went wrong? I'll admit I'm surprised it happened SO quickly, but it makes perfect sense that it happened.

    Harmonix can survive longer because they nailed the DLC system with music transferable between iterations, and therefore a greater incentive to invest longterm. Red Octane continued to produce superior hardware (my chosen setup being to play Rock Band on the Guitar Hero: World Tour hardware) but as the article points out, you only need to buy that once.

  • PlugMonkey #42 1 year ago

    Harmonix can survive longer because they nailed the DLC system

    Completely THIS.

    I haven't bought a GH game since World Tour because there is very little gameplay iteration, so all your really paying for is the songs. Why pay £40 for a disc of 40 songs, 30 of which I don't like, when I can go on the Rock Band store and spend £40 on 40 songs I really like?

    Rock Band 3 was bought by me for the much under publicised systemic improvements, such as mid-song joining and difficulty tuning, but it's the DLC store that will continue to milk money out of me forever and ever.

    Speaking of the under-publicising of Rock Band 3, does anyone else find it slightly interesting that the game was released with absolutely zero marketing support, and with most of the key peripherals unavailable, a few months before the company was bought out by the management for $50? I mean, it would hardly have helped them in buying out the company if it had been a hit, and most of my casual gaming friends (who make up a huge part of its market) didn't even know it existed.

    High profile RB3 re-launch in 3-2-1?

  • frunk #43 1 year ago

    @arcam
    People seem to forget that between Oct 2008 and Oct 2010 there were five Rock Band games released. 5 Rock Band games in 2 years. OK, lets get back to blaming Guitar Hero for milking the game

    Except every one of those (with the exception of Beatles) just added to your library. You could take it leave it. The underlying game you bought was still relevant as all the trackpacks, DLC and previous games were in there.

    Unlike GH's approach which made your last purchase redundant when the new one came out.

    And the fact that RB is "just a better game" - especially if you like to have friends round. Its about the band - not the individual - something that GH never really understood.

  • arcam #44 1 year ago

    It didn't make them redundant, it just meant you had to put in another disc instead of paying £5 to put them on your hard drive.

    I wouldn't be surprised if most of the mass market preferred the GH way of doing things.

  • kangarootoo #45 1 year ago

    I think Jesse Divnich is right on the money. GH ran for years, had numerous versions, and did extremely well. If they had released 2 of them and stopped, nobody would be talking about GH dying. They would just say it ran its course, like every other game does.

    GH stopped being made quite simply because you can't sell people the same thing over and over. They want something new. It happens every day.

    And the music game genre isn't just GH and its kin. Dance games are music games too, Vib Ribbon and Parappa the Rappa were music games. Music games aren't in decline, its just that one type of music game that was absurdly successful is now in decline.

  • kangarootoo #46 1 year ago

    @frunk

    "Unlike GH's approach which made your last purchase redundant when the new one came out."

    Not true.

    All the DLC and game discs after GH3 can be imported into GH5 or WoR (with a few per song exceptions, same as RB). None of your previous purchases are redundant at all. The model is exactly the same as RB.

  • gmjapan #47 1 year ago

    "For Pachter, the fact gamers could play new Guitar Hero games with the peripherals they already owned proved to be the killer blow."

    Being able to play new iterations with existing kit is a selling point to me. In fact, needing new kit everytime would be a deal breaker.

  • slippysloppy #48 1 year ago

    "For Pachter, the fact gamers could play new Guitar Hero games with the peripherals they already owned proved to be the killer blow."

    Surely that's the point of the games. Buy the hardware once, then purchase software over and over. That's how all console hardware manufacturers make their money. Patcher's a fool, I wonder what qualifies him to spout such nonsense and get paid for it.

  • peppergomez #49 1 year ago

    If the death of games like this leads kids to learn to play an actual instrument instead, then good riddance I say. And maybe Eric Brosius, who did the sound and music for the first two Thief games (basically, he is awesome) will return to projects more worthy of his talents, like the upcoming Thief game.
    Edited by peppergomez at 11/02/11 @ 16:09

  • callum9999 #50 1 year ago

    bratmandu - no you weren't negged for saying plastic instruments are silly (though I like them). You were negged because using actual strings would be ridiculous.

    The whole point is you are playing a guitar without actually playing it. If you did actually have to play a real guitar, why not just buy a guitar?

  • arcam #51 1 year ago

    The whole point is you are playing a guitar without actually playing it. If you did actually have to play a real guitar, why not just buy a guitar?

    Don't tell that to Rock Band!

  • bratmandu #52 1 year ago

    @callum9999

    Are you serious? The technology is there for games to recognise what notes are being played. Gaming would be an excellent and fun way to learn actual guitar. It's a no brainer evolution in the genre that devs have largely failed to go with.

  • Phishfood #53 1 year ago

    I think they really did milk it to death, there are still genres of gaming that are going strong from 20 years ago.

  • Windypops #54 1 year ago

    Does anyone else think the franchise's demise might have been down to the fact that everyone who ever played it now has useless, arthritic claws where their hands should be?

    Bought Warriors of Rock over Christmas - the first Guitar Hero game I've ever played - and, after playing it and enjoying it for a couple of days, found that it rendered my hands entirely useless. How does anyone play it on anything other than easy?

  • KungFuSpoon #55 1 year ago

    If the sequels had been good then the milking would've been forgiveable, but the focus was on the gimmick features like celebrity players, the customisable guitars (do we really need to chose the string type FFS) and the stupid story lines, rather than refining the gameplay, nailing the note charts and capturing the essence of what music is about which is what Rock Band did/does so much better.

  • dfooster #56 1 year ago

    It was a social game and like all social games they are played by non gamers who see it as the latest thing to have. Just like the wii. The Problem with these people is they can hop from gaming to something else entirely as they just follow pop culture whatever that might be.

    Next it will be the nintendo 3ds, then after that it will be 3D tvs when they become affordable. The real franchises that last are the ones who appeal to hardcore gamers as the developers will always have a consumer base that doesn't come and go based on pop culture.

  • cjs #57 1 year ago

    The technology to recognise what you're playing on a real guitar has been around for decades, and could be done with a fairly cheap USB box into which you plug the guitar. But there are other issues there that might trip up beginners. You'd have to tune the guitar (though the box could help with this) before you could play, you'd have to learn picking technique very early on, and most beginners would have aching fingers after a few tens of minutes of play, and would need to play a fair amount and regularly to develop callouses.

    That's not to say you couldn't build some great computer-based training systems for guitar. But that does take it somewhat out of the game world.

  • skoypidia #58 1 year ago

    Who wants another GH anyway...

  • rprince #59 1 year ago

    I'm surprised no-one has blamed the music industry. It is their ridiculous licensing terms and fees that make it impossible for music games to continue to exist in the long term.

    Oh, and Activision flogged it to death and seem to have based their business model on consumers buying a new set of instruments every year, rather than making it a sensible and attractive proposition to buy songs (i.e. not charging more than it costs to buy the MP3 from Amazon or iTunes!)