The NPD group recently revealed figures that indicate a shrinking market for music games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero. The genre’s biggest saturater, (evil) Activision, has naturally come out of the (evil) woodwork to (evilly) deny any such issues, claiming that it believes there is still plenty of room for growth in the realm of plastic toy guitars.
“It has been a difficult economic year for everybody. Videogames are down, music videogames in terms of overall are down, but most people don’t understand that the music videogame category is actually the second largest selling gaming category period,” boasts Guitar Hero boss Dan Rosenweig. “So after Call Of Duty … the entire music genre and Guitar Hero franchise will actually be the number two selling game franchise, so that’s a position we actually consider to be enviable.
“We’re focused on providing value to the consumer, so I don’t think [the market for music games] is saturated. If you actually look at the number of consoles that are out there on a global basis, less than 20 per cent actually have a music game. So there’s the next 80 per cent that we have the opportunity to go after. So there are more consoles, those consoles are getting more connected and we have the opportunity to sell more into that audience. So we’re not particularly concerned about that.”
That’s some impressive number spinning, but come on. You can’t tell me you’re releasing five Guitar Hero games in one year and that you’re not saturating the market. That’s just from one franchise, too.
