Guitar Hero III Sells Huge

Activision has just announced that Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is the first game title to generate $1 billion dollars in sales. Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith spoke during his CES '09 keynote about Guitar Hero's huge impact on the gaming and music industries. Guitar Hero's newest title World Tour is continuing to keep the brand strong with its lineup of tracks, artist contributions and a robust online mode featuring over 141,000 songs created by users.

It seems like these rhythm games become insanely popular quickly, but the repetitious gameplay doesn't seem like it can keep audiences engaged for long. Look at Dance Dance Revolution for example. The game became an overnight pop culture phenomenon, but now its popularity is way down. Instead of being the original arcade essential it once was, it's instead just routinely thrown into every new, yet unoriginal, comedy film as a gimmick to bring laughs (I'm talking to you, Yes Man.)

Overall I think where Guitar Hero has improved over other rhythm titles is user-generated content, and the future possibility of adding an instrument or two to each installment to keep things fresh. Nevertheless, you can't deny that Guitar Hero has managed to become a record selling franchise, and still continues to improve with each new installment.

Source: GameDaily