Activision dismisses Guitar Hero franchise fatigue

…the consumer has voted and we’ve outsold Rock Band four-to-one; we’re outselling Rock Band 10-to-1 in Europe. If you listen to the analyst side of things and the Viacom earnings report, it does look like Rock Band is very successful financially. So, you’d have to conclude so far, our business model has served the consumer and shareholders better. But we’re really encouraged by the response that we’ve been getting to not only this year’s titles, but to the ones coming out, like DJ Hero and Guitar Hero 5. We look at it two ways. One, we’ve got about 15 million households in North America and Europe that are engaged with Guitar Hero and there’s a thirst for more of their favorite music content and the next level in innovative gameplay surrounding that music. So we’ve got 15 million consumers that are hungry for more that we want to keep satisfied, and that’s the basis of the Smash Hits, of Guitar Hero: Metallica with those with a bend towards metal, and Guitar Hero 5, which is the broadest and most innovative lineup of guitar focused songs that we’ve ever had.

And then you look at the opportunity, and in the same geography, there’s about 300 million households, most of which enjoy music, and maybe not all of them will be gamers, but there’s enormous expansion opportunity and that’s what we’re looking at things like DJ Hero to do and Band Hero. DJ Hero will speak to the club scene and hip-hop and rap in a way that we haven’t even approached before; it’s a fast growing genre in North America and it’s huge in Europe… we haven’t even touched it, and the consumer response will be phenomenal at E3. You look at Band Hero, and that’ll be our first ‘E’ rated title focusing on top 40 pop hits, family oriented, so again we think that’ll expand the audience. On top of that, we still do a fair amount of post purchase content: downloadable song packs, track packs, even albums. So we really see it as a balance between those, but we’ve been very encouraged by the consumer response to the slate that’s coming out in the second half of the year. – Mike Griffith, Activision Publishing CEO

I don’t know about you but I’m kind of fatigued by reading that answer!  Full interview at the link.

Link

-Justin