The Death of the Music Game Genre

The music genre has been in video games for a long time now, with titles like Dance Dance Revolution and Beatmania, but these games never really did well in the United States. They did a majority of their sale in Japan where they are more relevant than current music games like The Beatles: Rock Band or Band Hero. On November 8th 2005, a game came out that would forever change the music video game genre. This game is Guitar Hero which originally was released with a price around the $100 dollar range. At the time, no one knew how well the series was going to do. The game was released by RedOctane and developed by Harmonix. Sites like IGN and Gamespot praised the game for its soundtrack and Guitar peripheral. It also received great reviews and game sales amounted to $45 million in 2005 alone.

A year later, The games sequel Guitar Hero 2 was released in North America on the Playstation 2. The game was again developed by Harmonix but instead it was co-published by RedOctane as well as Activison. It received better review than the original and received a good amount of awards including 5 from IGN's Best of 2006. In December 2006, Guitar Hero 2 for PlayStation 2 was the second best-selling video game of the month, selling 805,200 units. On October 28th 2007, the third installment of the series Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock was release on multiple platforms but this time did not bear the name of Harmonix. This time the game was developed by Neversoft and still published by RedOctane and Activision. At this time Harmonix Developed the game Rock Band which was published by EA and MTV Games. Both games did very well in sales and reception.

Now, skip ahead two years, and look at what these series have given us. The Guitar Hero series has grown from just three games to an astounding twenty stand alone games for platforms from Xbox 360 to iPhone. Activision will be releasing nine Guitar Hero games in the 2009 alone. Rather then the Rock Band Series which has released three console games, which a forth coming soon. Rock Band took a whole different approach to the affair. They released a game and optional downloadable content, with over 800 songs, you only choose the ones you want instead of buying a whole new game for a handful of songs.

Now, I am not biased. I considered myself a fan of each series and tried to keep up on all releases but I just grew tired of the genre and I feel like it is the fault of having so many games shoved in my face. It feels like Activision is doing what it did with its Tony Hawk series and milking it for every penny rather than getting consumers excited for a completely new and refreshing game. The whole series went from being fun and young to old and profitable. I currently own Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero 5 but I don't think I will be spending much money on either series because I know once I lay down the $60 to $100 bucks, another game is gonna come out. It is in my best interest to just forget about both series because I will be a much happier(and richer) gamer.

Game info was found @
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Band
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_hero