Guitar Hero, Rock Band Sales Continue To Drop For A Second Year In A Row

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Well, we knew it was going to happen eventually – sales for music games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero have been dropping over the past couple of years, but this year pretty much spells death for the genre. In an analysis by Gamasutra, Matt Matthews took a deep look at the sales of of music games since 2008, and what he found should be pretty disturbing to all of those hoping for a Rock Band 4 or a Guitar Hero 37.

The analysis revealed that in the whole of 2008, music games sold a total of $1.6 billion. In 2009, that number fell to around $870 million, but so far this year, the number hasn’t even reached $250 million. He added at the end of the article, “Short of a Christmas miracle, music games won’t break $400 million for all of 2010.”

And this is what you get when over-saturate a market. You can call foul on me all you want, but I’m pretty sure this is Activision’s fault too. Harmonix were hugely innovative when it came to the original Rock Band and Rock Band 3, and with every Guitar Hero we just see a re-hash of old mechanics that were, essentially, done by Harmonix first.

Don’t get me wrong, Harmonix is partially to blame too, but the six games they released from 2007-2010 pales in comparison to the eleven Guitar Hero games Activision released in the same amount of time (and that isn’t counting either of the DJ Hero titles, effectively bringing that number to 13).