Guitar Hero outsells Rock Band in US

By Oli Welsh Published 15 December, 2008

But gap narrows as music games decline.

Investment analyst Ben Schachter of UBS has been poring over the sales figures of Guitar Hero and Rock Band in the US, and has found that the Activision Blizzard series outsold the EA games by over a million copies in November.

The picture isn't quite as clear-cut as it seems, though. Schachter - as quoted by GameSpot - found that Guitar Hero sales are in decline compared to last year, while Rock Band's are increasing sharply. Overall, the huge US market for music games created by the original Guitar Hero seems to be in decline.

Over 1.7 million Guitar Hero games of all versions and formats were sold in the US in November, of which 978,000 were copies of the latest version, Guitar Hero World Tour. This compares with 628,452 copies of Rock Band and Rock Band 2.

However, Guitar Hero sales were down 25.3 per cent on November 2007, versus a very healthy increase of 64.7 per cent for Rock Band. The combined sales of both games fell 12 per cent from last year, leading Schachter to speculate that the market might be saturated.

"This will fuel concerns that the genre is past its peak," he said. "With Activision and others sure to bring new innovation to the genre next year we can't count it out, but it almost certainly won't be the growth driver it has been over the past two years."

However, with these games game sales aren't the whole picture. It recently came to light that more than 28 million songs had been downloaded for Rock Band from the Xbox Live and PlayStation Network stores.

That's many millions of dollars in additional revenue from music-hungry game fans, so perhaps investors shouldn't be too quick to chuck the plastic guitars in the bin.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (5) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • steviepunk #1 3 years ago

    Doesn't it occur to the analysts that maybe the sales of GH:WT aren't too bad considering that the whole band package is twice the cost of the guitar only GH3? I though it would be obvious that there would be a smaller market for a more expensive product (even ignoring the current economic issues). Last year, people would have been much more comfortable shelling out £65 for a 'novelty' game as a present, while this year shelling out £150 is bit more daunting.

    Of course, it would be interesting (maybe) to see what the break down is between the Full Band, Guitar Only and Solus versions of the game.

  • HermitArcader #2 3 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011

  • Toothball #3 3 years ago

    I'd be curious to see how that compared by platform, what with Rock Band being Xbox only for a while.

  • AliRay #4 3 years ago

    Since when did Activision do anything innovative?!

    EDIT: AnalystFAIL
    Edited by 1 at 15/12/08 @ 16:50

  • Oh-Bollox #5 3 years ago

    I'm sure the price is nothing to do with it.

    Probably down to luck fairies or some equally realistic factor.