Report: 'Guitar Hero reaching its peak'

A prize for anyone who can guess how many toxins are in this man's body......

I really wanted to love GH:WT but I felt so underwhelmed by it. There wasn't one big issue with it but so many small ones which eventually added up and ended with me selling the game after about two weeks. And that's even though I didn't have any hardware issue since I only played the guitar and sang in the game. I'd still consider buying GH5 but they would have to do loads of tweaks to it.

Now's the time to try to stick it to Harmonix with dlc, and not try to flood the market with "band versions" and "track packs"

I think he's dead right about GH. It's passed its prime, but that's partly because of the quality level dropping off.

Rock Band is likely stagnating too, but I expect it to stay almost level (at least on unit game sales, not counting instrument sales) for some time.

Activision will be spreading these stagnated sales across more and more SKUs, they plan to triple their number of rhythm games in a single year.

Too many guitar games? This analyst clearly hasn't played Rock Revolution!

What needs to happen is for Guitar Hero to release these band titles as DLC. Just have one rockband, one GH and just release band packs for maybe 20 dollars and keep the continous content for Rockband.

Time to release the accordion peripheral to jazz things up.

exactly, this is just a convenient way of saying "our products aren't as good as they should be".

I think the whole genre is going to start tapering off, but that doesn't mean there isn't a strong market for them. They're just going to have to keep adding new features and not relying on band names to carry their products.

(Think alcohol anonymous)

Im a Delaystation 3 fanboy and i like to play alone

This is true and I've been thinking it for a while. There are two main reasons, the first being song selection. While good music continues to be put in to these games, it can't happen forever. We'll go from the exclamations of the first games:"Hey, they have so and so in here? Awesome!" To: "So, are there any good (for some this means recognizable) songs on here?"

The second reason being that you can only revolutionize and refine so much before you start losing the casual and pickupandplayiness of the games that have made them popular.

Agreed. RockBand 2 is good how it is, if people can't get the DLC digitally then just start making discs.

I've gotten tired of Guitar Hero/Rock Band specifically because of market saturation and growing incompatibility issues.

First of all, there's the instruments. There are none that are cross-platform, and even within a platform the guidelines of what does and doesn't work with what are so complex it necessitates a "compatibility matrix". That's unacceptable. And don't go pretending this is purely because of Activision. Remember, it was Harmonix that deliberately blocked the TAC controllers in GH2. And if you're buying Harmonix's line that it's just due to technical issues with the TAC controllers, think again: the unofficial GH2 guitar compatibility patch that's been floating around the net proves that Harmonix's claim is a complete load of shit (I've used it - it works perfectly fine).

Then, there's the fact that if you wanted to play a particular song, there was only one disc to run: Guitar Hero. Then there was GH2, and you're chances of needing to swap games to play a particular song rose to 50%. Not ideal, but still acceptable, of course. But now, we've got three Guitar Heroes from Harmonix (If you think it's 2, you're forgetting "80's"), at least three more from Neversoft, AND two Rock Bands, and then there's Rock Revolution as well. It's gotten to the point where I don't even know what the fuck song is on what game, and I have no interest in memorizing such trivialities. It's time for these "Band Simulators" to become a *platform*, not three separate series of games. We can have competing "Interactive Song" players, that's fine, that's great even. But if each one is going to continue to support nothing but it's own proprietary format, then the whole genre is going to die off fairly quickly and become as insignificant as DDR is today.

Guitar Hero was done once it wasn't being developed by Harmonix anymore. Now that Harmonix have milked another two games out of the rock genre, I'm really curious about where they'll go next. I hope they don't just get stuck making Rock Band 5: We Were Kidding About It Being A Platform Edition.

Add me to the small list of people who don't care about these games. I play games to do stuff I can't do in real life. If I wanted to play a guitar, I'd buy one and learn :D

I was obsessed with GH1, GH2, and somewhat with GH3. Rock Band was my last foray into the genre.

Though its fun to play, I don't want to spend any more money on it. I'll just stick to my 'real' instruments and maybe pick up the newer GH/RB iterations on down the line for cheap used.

I'm peaking man!

There's a Wal-Mart commercial on TV showing a family rocking out with Guitar Hero or possibly Rock Band, in that PC, post-feminist way where the mom is playing guitar with her kid while neuter-daddy tends the baby. If it weren't already obvious that this concept was dead as dirt, that put the final nail in the coffin.

Your "alcohol anonymous" joke comments are getting old.

I was totally obsessed with Guitar Hero 1 and 2, and then 3 was...off. It just wasn't as fun. I couldn't put my finger on it. World Tour is a disaster, in my eyes. It feels so totally rushed. It was a step backwards in terms of UI, and the song list was terrible, for the most part (but that's opinion).

I'm still enjoying RB2, though.

To me, this shows that this decline in sales is because of a decline in quality...

wtf is up with the purple bar? ya I know what to do on it, but seriously was there not enough to think about already on the guitar? *Shrug* Oh well, whatever, it's all getting run into the ground anyway.

And to the guy(s) saying they should have just offered DLC instead of full games, I've been saying that since Aerosmith and RB2 were announced, I agree with you guys 100%.

The next thing to happen should be an iTunes for the genre. Let anyone who's already able to sell on iTunes (to prevent copyright issues, if at least to let iTunes take that responcibility, not RB or GH) given the chance to have a "Download this song for Rock Band/GH" option. Let them have this option next to the "Buy this song on iTunes" button on sites like Amazon, what have you.

None of this music pack nonsense. Let us buy songs individually at our leisure, with anyone selling on a service like iTunes in on the business.

can anyone say "tony hawk"

any franchise is going to lose sales if they come out with a new disc every month.

Even if it was quality every time, R* would have a hard time keeping sales up for a new GTA every month.

As it was with DDR, so to shall it be with Guitar Hero/Rock Band.

I wonder what the next fad in gaming will be. Probably a GTA game with a plastic gun or something. People like games that require no imagination or effort on their part.

man FUCK keith richards hes notin but a fuckin dousch bag.. Fukin old azz nigga tryin ta be young... fukin white boys admiring this POS... the dudes a has been... at least most rappas out there know when to quit...