Bobby Kotick talks Guitar and DJ Hero, the fall and the coming rise

Were people really saying "kill it, Kotick."?

Or were they REALLY saying "kill Kotick"?

"But we created this critically acclaimed, highly rated game,"

No, you saw that Guitar Hero 1 & 2 were selling well, so then you bought the series and released the same game for four or five years.

Activision did nothing to innovate within the rhythm genre. They only made changes to the core gameplay when they saw what Harmonix was doing with Rock Band. I guarantee you that if Harmonix had never created Rock Band, Guitar Hero would still be a single-player game today.

So, does this mean Kotick has been rehabilitated and is no longer a douchebag?

Just make Guitar Hero a 2 player, tops game, that gets updated with DLC (GH 1-3), and not what it became (GH WT and beyond).

Rock Band has the market sorta cornered as a 4+ player game, so just go back to epic guitar duels.

I believe there is still more "Kill yourself, Kotick" input at this point in time.

Anyways, is anyone suprised that Activision is going all zombie on GH? Works to sell CoD...

I wonder if he realises that what he is saying about what went wrong with GH also can be applied to CoD....

PS: The amount of money he makes makes me sick to my stomach.

You wanna fix the Hero franchise, Kotick?
* Stop churning out niche one-band games, or at the very least find some better bands. I can get behind Metallica - though I understand a lot of people can't - but Aerosmith and Van Halen are overrated and should be left in the 80's. (Downvotes? Come at me, bro.)
* Start ripping off Rock Band just a little more - namely, take the idea of a single platform for songs, and, well... just completely take it. I bought about 47 Guitar Hero games and maybe a few DLC packs, it'd be nice to play them on one title.
* Stop lying about DJ Hero. You practically never supported it. And thanks for the slim pickings and outrageous prices on DLC. I really don't know what license arrangements need to be made to fix the $3 song problem, but surely you can pull a rabbit out of a hat here. Hell, give us lesser-known or up-and-coming artists who aren't as money hungry. That'd be groovy.

Give this guy a chanson manly because I like Dj hero.

Heart and soul?

HEART AND SOUL?

This is BOBBY KOTICK. He said he set out to strip game development of every last ounce of fun, and to make the development environment one of fear. To scare employees into giving every last drop of ability they had or be fired. He cancelled games simply because they didn't "show longterm ability to have annual installments." Heart and soul my ass. More like PR and bullshit talk.

His goal was to wring every last drop of profit from every franchise he touched, and this motherf!@#$% is talking about heart and soul?

Complete motherf!@#$%^ hypocrisy.

"earned more than $4.4 billion through Activision Blizzard last year"

What?

it was never something I could play at home alone, but it was a massive blast playing at a friend's house with other people. The thing is if my friend already has it with all the instruments or peripherals then there's really no need for me to buy it to...

The fall of guitar hero was simply this:
Harmonix had a better idea so the ditched GH.
Activision, being the "smart" guys that they were, kept GH going for as long as humanly possible.

I was amazed they made it past 3 to tell you the truth.

"So we're going to take the products out of the market, and we're not going to tell anybody what we're doing for awhile, but we're going to stop selling Guitar Hero altogether," Kotick said. "And then we're going to go back to the studios and we're going to use new studios and reinvent Guitar Hero. And so that's what we're doing with it now."


So were not gonna tell people what we're doing for awhile, but here is what we're doing.

I think Guitar Hero 6 was great, and I'm saying that having played every GH and Rockband since GH1. It's a shame it got shunned by press and consumers, because it had a solid guitar controller, a great concept (epic quest to unlock guitar god cheat), an even better setlist (even compared to stock Rockband 3 and especially compared to GH5 because I like metal) and the best GH gameplay since GH2!

I still play it regularly and I'm sad that I will never see a proper GH again, because the "new direction" will certainly not be my cup of tea as a GH-Veteran and probably catered more towards the casual audience.

DJ Hero was also a great game but nobody noticed it.

Well, I did like Guitar Hero 1-3, after that I lost interest because Rock Band won my money. They need to reinvent Guitar Hero and start at the basics of what made it fun. Then try to improve on it and attempt to sell it to the public. But I still say that it was selling well up until when they began releasing three a year and crap.

Even I am experiencing franchise fatigue from COD and it only come out once a year. And this is coming from a former hardcore COD fan (30+ days played on COD4, WAW, and MW2).

I guess Activision likes to see their money-printing franchises get drove into the ground. They are some money-grubbing fiends led by the worst of them all, Bobby Kotick himself.

In layman's term:

"We have leftovers. Lets put it back in the oven and hope it tastes better."

In all the years that Activision has owned the rights to the Guitar Hero franchise, it only seems they have gone downhill.
GHIII: great game, great gameplay, cool new features, and DLC
GH:WT: A very poor attempt to compete with Harmonix to make a "band game", but without much thought put into it at all.
GH: 5: That same poor attempt with the only real changes to the game with its looks, rather than the gameplay itself. (Worst of all, they didn't bother with the look or feel of the instruments, which desperately needed a makeover)
All other GH band-exclusive games: A very very poor attempt to...well I really don't know where they were going with this.

In other words, Harmonix has made the 'right-move' every time they've made a new game. With Rock Band 2, they made DLC even greater, they added convenient gameplay mechanics and extra modes (ncluding online modes) that made the game truly stand out. Their impressive 80+ song set, etc.
However, I believe even Harmonix messed up a bit with Rock Band 3. With focus more on using "realistic instruments", which never go over well with these types of games, I think they lost a lot of potential buyers. Along with a not-very impressive setlist, and a lack of competitive online modes, I think Rock band 3 was a step slightly in the wrong direction.

In other words, I think Activision REALLY needs to take a lot of time thinking about what fans actually want, rather than making a new game.
What I, as a former fan of the GH franchise, expect is:
-A set list that appeals to me personally, but also gives me a chance to find new bands and artists (I don't care if the setlist has 'Over 100 songs' if only 20 of them are fun to play. They could put out a 40 song setlist, but if all the songs are fun to play, I would still be a happy buyer. I believe variety is the spice of these types of games, and I think that the set list should appeal to everyone.
-Get rid of the bells and whistles! I want that core gameplay I get with Rock Band and with the original GH games. And I don't want a damn slide-bar or anything like that!!! I personally don't care about creating a character, collecting instruments, etc. I just want an awesome experience playing the songs.
-Get rid of fan-made DLC. I want to download songs from bands, not some 12 year old who got a little crazy in the studio.
As far as instruments:
1.Take a damn lesson from Harmonix!
-Make a guitar with a thin neck and easy-to-press buttons. If Harmonix got one thing right (and they definitely got more than one), it was the design for their guitars!
2.Drums. Just do it right this time! GH drums were the most horrible music peripheral I've ever experienced.
3.Microphone. I dunno, just make it wireless.
4.Keyboard? I dunno, add it if it feels right.

Well, I've said too much aleady. Just make a good game!

What he is really saying is, we are going to wait till the next generation of consoles, and then release the series again, with instruments that are new and slightly different, with an upgraded graphics engine and features only the next gen could do.
In other words, we cannot innovate or milk it anymore this generation, so we will wait till sometime in the next gen.

It's a shame, DJ Hero was really good. Too bad DLC packs are almost £10.

the first line of the article is kinda confusing/misleading... it makes it sound like he personally gained 4.4 billion

"and these are the hardest failures, when THEY put THEIR heart and soul into it and THEY deliver an extraordinarily well received game, and nobody shows up to buy it."

So, GH failed because they also "tried" to support DJ Hero?

Hey Kotick, hows about making a new big name FPS series to supplement Call of Duty?

Please?

Activision's games inevitably fail because of a complete lack of innovation, not because they're inherently bad games that people don't like.

People liked the core gameplay of the Guitar Hero series, but it failed simply because that's all it really ended up being; the sequels were mostly the core gameplay with a new track listing and a few new "features" that weren't really that innovative.

It's the same reason their Call of Duty franchise will fall flat on it's face at some point. If they can't pull their shit together and start inventing new ideas rather than reinventing the wheel then they're just going to be offering sub-par games, in my opinion.

Why should I play any of Activision's games when I could just play the game most of them are based off, that's also conveniently a lot cheaper nowadays?