WTF Happened To Guitar Hero?

The Credit Crunch

“Boo!”, you cry, “Economics are boring, I don’t want to hear about that!” You’re right, I know, but we would be fools not to acknowledge the drastic impact that 2008’s global financial crash had on consumers, and thus the games industry. I’ll make it quick.

By the late 2000s, sales were missing their targets hard and it was starting to become incredibly obvious that the genre’s popularity was taking a nosedive. Everyone was struggling financially, and I think it’s no big leap to assume that families who previously had loads of disposable income to spend on yet another shabby plastic instrument were then having to re-evaluate their priorities.

The games and their accessories weren’t cheap: the first Guitar Hero retailed for $69.99 complete with one guitar controller. This doesn’t sound too bad at all when you consider it came with the disk and a bit of kit, but when you account for inflation the equivalent amount today is around $100. And that $100 was for a game that wasn’t exactly full of endless replayability or top of the line graphics.

With Guitar Hero bringing in lawsuits and bad faith from the music industry, being pitted against and alongside a million other practically identical games and also not making as much money as it once did (some sales missing their targets by over 50% ), it made sense to just cut it. Following these disappointing figures, Activision shut down RedOctane and by 2011 they put the whole project on hiatus - allegedly after cancelling a Guitar Hero 7 game.

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