WTF Happened To Guitar Hero?

The Attempted Resurrection

Some things just aren't meant to be, and Activision found this out the hard way when they tried to make Guitar Hero happen again in 2015.

Activision released Guitar Hero Live, a reboot of the classic Guitar Hero IP but with a whole new controller. This was their attempt at innovation: getting rid of the old five-button guitar design and replacing it with a complex six-buttoned, three-fretted bit of kit. Their hope was that they could get their big revival with the advent of a new console generation, but failed to account for the fact that - frankly - their whole plan was not very good.

The appetite already wasn't there for the kind of game being offered, and so the nail in the coffin of Guitar Hero's ill-fated reboot was the ridiculous monetisation model they were leaning on. If people aren't that interested in your game in the first place, they're certainly not interested in shelling out more and more money to make it fun and playable.

Some elements were cool - people enjoyed the new controller for the most part, and appreciated the efforts behind Guitar Hero TV (GHTV), a section of the game that introduced new music regularly.

This wasn't enough to make up for the bad pay-to-play situation. People were most upset with the fact that they regularly had to grind to earn enough points to unlock one song they actually wanted to play in GHTV, with the game offering a way to bypass this inconvenience by using real money. Even then there was no way to permanently unlock the songs you liked, obviously in hopes you would just keep paying to skip to them.

All this aside though, fundamentally, the heyday of the plastic instrument was over. No matter how much they tried to design a controller that you "wouldn't be ashamed to have in your living room", they were fighting a losing battle.

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