Rhythm Gaming is all the rage, or is it? Turns out Guitar Hero: World Tour didn’t meet or exceed the figures they hit with Guitar Hero III. Where GH3 brought in $115 million in the first week, GHWT brought in $67 million in the same time frame.
Why?
There are plenty of factors that could cut down the sales units, considering those that can purchase Guitar Hero World Tour don’t have to purchase additional instruments to play the game like they played GH3.
- Rock Band 2: This game arrived before Guitar Hero 3 and folks went for this game instead because it was first to launch. Some gamers have to make a choice on which to purchase because they can’t buy both.
- Hot Games: Although Rhythm gaming can be fun, a lot of great games are arriving this season so gamers have to make some big decisions.
- Economics: The economy isn’t exactly thriving right now and retail outlets are already predicting less than stellar numbers.
- Saturation: Since the original Guitar Hero game, we’ve had a number of titles from Activision including their Aerosmith edition and Harmonix pulling out Rock Band and Rock Band 2. There is talk of a Hendrix version and a Metallic release – how much is too much?
We know people love charts, so here is another to toss at you via Kotaku:
Guitar Hero World Tour Sales, via Kotaku
The break down from Guitar Hero 3 to World Tour is obvious, also apparent is the shift in console when buying into the rhythm gaming franchises. The Wii has started taking more market share, odd considering the DLC isn’t there, and the PS3 is showing its lackluster sales of the console by growing in proportion but not excelling to grab huge share (PS3 fanboys attack!). Sony kicked ass by taking control of the share using their PlayStation 2 with Guitar Hero 3, but has lost that lead for the World Tour.
Will these lower sales figure change the future roadmap for Activision in their Guitar Hero franchise or are they satisfied taking home $67 million in the first week of the launch. That is still a lot of money and probably doesn’t even consider any money they could (or will) potentially make on the World Tour hardware.
Luckily, the rhythm gaming content doesn’t get old with age, it just gets more classic. No doubt Guitar Hero World Tour will be landing in homes over the holidays and into 2009.
You missed a MAJOR part of Archon. The squares are white or black, and some cycle from light to dark. If you’re playing light, your unit becomes more powerful on light squares, and if you’re playing dark, the reverse is true. The point of the game was to capture all the power squares, most of which were cycling between light and dark.
Archon was super-addictive, especially against friends. It was there with MULE as a staple for most machines.
PS. The sorceress isn’t evil, she’s the dark, the night.
Lolz i like Chess, me and my friend daniel had games that went for like 3 lunch breaks back @ skw =p
It’s been a few weeks since I have replied to the QoTW due to moving house and then a change of ISP (finally I’m paying less than £40 a month for 8Mb/s broadband!).
Over the last two or three days I have downloaded and listened to 5 weeks worth of your podcasts and enjoyed all of them immensely, as per usual.
On to the question of the week; any, and all, of the Halo games.I have played the original three games but not ODST and the /abomination/ that is Halo Wars (Real Time Strategy should never, I repeat; NEVER be ported to consoles). I have never felt the need to replay any of the Halo games because, apart from the feeling of ‘meh’ that they make you feel after playing, they did something I hate… They released the first game on the PC with a decent port, but then the Halo 2 port to the PC was, and I’m being as kind as I can here, totally diabolical. First of all, you needed Vista… Need I say more?
Halo 3 was pretty good… But entirely predictable and again left me with a feeling of ‘meh’. I am the only true PC Gamer in a fairly large group of Xbox 360 owners… And they don’t understand my pain! I tried to show them how FPS’s /should/ be played in terms of Multiplayer (i.e. in a 32 player server with some decent admins) but they still do not see the light!
The only other games that I have played and then decided never to play again are usually games that I just hate, like the new Wolfenstein game (awful awful game) and… Well Mario Galaxy was terrible as well. Other than that I cannot think of anything else!
Cheers, and peace 🙂
In regaurds to the question of the week.
i would not want AC2 cuz i preordered the special edition of the game in September. i would want an alienware gaming laptop =]