Goodbye Guitar Hero

I've been saying this for years, putting your eggs in the basket of casual gamers is gambling.

I would make an argument that the casual gamer has only ran the market 3 times in videogame history. The early 80's, the later part of the NES, and now the Wii era. The early 80's lead to a crash. The post-NES era almost killed Nintendo and allowed Sony and Microsoft to enter the market. We've yet to see what will happen post-Wii, but we've seen the Move and Kinect added to the "hardcore" consoles, we'll likely see it be the basis for the PS3 and Xbox720whatever.

Anyways. Casual gamers. I myself like Guitar Hero, especially in a casual setting, like a group at a party. That's the same time I liked the Wii. The total shitstorm that happened after Guitar Hero created an entire cash cow centered around it. Instead of keeping a level head and pushing a new genre forward, they freaked out and milked it for what they could. The era lasted only half a decade or so.

Instantly the companies behind the first Guitar Hero split, and so you instantly got a competitor called Rock Band. You also got every record company in the business pushing "new" talent to go into these games that were originally about rocking out to the classic songs you always wanted to play. Suddenly you're playing a mish mash of bands you'll never hear from again, along with hip hop songs.

The worst part is, they turned out sequels like CRAZY with few improvements. So you had TWO franchises, putting out sequels, and they all did basically the same thing. That doubled the perceived amount of guitar games.

The difference between casuals and hardcore games is easily seen in the name themselves. Hardcore fans would buy the new and improved instruments, would buy the extra track lists for their favorite genre. The hardcore says "I've played these 40 songs to master, I need more to challenge me"

The casuals look and say "I already have 2 guitars, and the game comes with 40 songs, why do I need more? I wanna play Smells like Teen Spirit again, I know that one, its comfortable, I get 5 stars every time"

So Guitar Hero 3 sold something like 1.5 million copies in its first month.

Guitar Hero 6(the heavy metal looking, no licenses, "return to hardcore gaming" one) sold 180,000 in 6 months.

I think they thought they were catering to the usual gamer. Its the only thing I can think to justify things. In most game series you get a new one every other year. In 5 years we had Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero 2, Guitar Hero the 80s, Guitar Hero Metallica, Guitar Hero 3, Guitar Hero Aerosmith, Guitar Hero Van Halen, Guitar Hero 4, Guitar Hero Greatest Hits, Guitar Hero 5, and Guitar Hero 6.

Now add all that to 6 different major Rock Band releases, and 2 DJ Heros. There are hardcore gamers that would not buy that many games in so short a time. Even Madden fans, arguably the most rabid niche group, wouldn't buy Maddens released that fast.

They forgot who they were making games for, and for that they have lost their shirts and killed the genre within 5 years. Now they have to wait and find the next casual friendly genre, and who knows how far that is away. It could be 20 years, especially after the bad taste people have in their mouth about the whole band game thing. They think Dance Hero or whatever its called is going to save them. I some how doubt it.

But then again, this is not my demographic.