Guitar Hero Reigns Supreme

Blake Snow, GamePro
Sep 20, 2008 3:38 pm

Rock Band might be the critically darling at the moment, but most gamers still flock to Guitar Hero, says Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.

Speaking at an investor conference last week as reported by Kotaku, Kotick said: “We’re outselling [Rock Band] 6:1. When you think about the access we have to 30 percent of the world’s music at Universal, we have a unique advantage.”

Guitar Hero, often considered the original gangster of North American music games, first launched in 2005 for PlayStation 2, enjoying instant success. Two years later, MTV Games upped the ante when releasing Rock Band, replete with toy drums and a microphone in addition to guitar and bass.

“Our nearest comthe petitor [EA/MTV Games] has a couple hundred people working on these projects,” added Kotick. “We have close to 2000 people just dedicated to the Guitar Hero note tracking, introduction of new hardware, and introduction of new software, so we just have a lot more in the way of resources available to us to continue to dominate the category.”

This holiday, the rhythm wars will continue when Activision releases its response to Rock Band in the form of Guitar Hero World Tour, which features a song creation mode in addition to improved drums and instruments when compared to Rock Band. Rock Band 2 launched Sunday for Xbox 360, and will follow in the coming months on Wii, PS3, and PS2.