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Business News Digital
Guitar Hero et al have peaked, but still have longevity
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 17 December 2008
‘Guitar Hero’ and ‘Rock Band’ and all those other cheap imitations have been something of a success story in the last 18 months, of course, and the record companies have been busy, possibly a little late in the day, seeing how they can turn the public’s passion for pretending to play music into a revenue stream by making music available to download for the game.
Which is all lovely, but we can’t be having too much good news can we? So, thank God for reports that stats from research firm NPD Group show interest in the music game franchises has peaked, and that sales of the actual games is in decline.
NPD’s report on November sales is yet to be published, but according to Wired one of the company’s analysts has said there has been a 50% series-by-series decline in the last twelve months, which suggests falling demand in addition to any other economic factors.
NPD analyst Jesse Divnich told reporters: “Currently, we expect unit sales to decline by more than 50 percent series-over-series for November. This is coming off the October month where series-over-series units declined by more than 60 percent”.
That said, while interest may not be quite what it was earlier in the year, Divnich isn’t predicting the end of music-based gaming just yet, saying the market will be profitable for at least a decade, and therefore it is certainly still worth the record companies trying to get a piece of the action.
Divnich: “We expect ‘Guitar Hero’ and ‘Rock Band’ releases for the next 10 years as they will always have a large and loyal market base, just as [late nineties dance game ‘Dance Dance Revolution’] is still today a very profitable franchise for Konami, even though that series reached its peak a long time ago”.
