What s up guys! It s Jason here and welcome to my YouTube channel, Gaming Insight.
There will probably never be two games created again that have given us so many rock and roll jam
sessions in front of our home television screens. These two games were Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
There had been many games of all sorts in the past several decades that had innovative controllers,
such as when Nintendo came out with a handgun zapper for games like Duck Hunt,
or when Atari released the Pac Man joystick. Back in 2008, Activision was soaring high.
In just 26 months since launching the original Guitar Hero, total sales for the franchise had
reached $1 billion. Then in 2009, Activision announced that Guitar Hero 3 Legends of Rock,
the single game itself, had sold over $1 billion units! Fast forward to today,
and both Guitar Hero and Rock Band are completely gone. I have fond memories with friends over my
place singing and playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band, debating which one was better,
which lead me down the rabbit hole during the past week to explore and make this video to figure out
what really happened to Guitar Hero? Why did our favorite Rock Band video game disappear?
Is Guitar Hero coming back? By the end of this video, you ll be an expert and you might
just go back to the basement to find Guitar Hero and bust out a jam. That plastic guitar
might even be a collectibles item someday. But before we begin As this is a brand-new channel
I started this year, if you wouldn t mind just tapping that LIKE button or leaving a comment,
I ll definitely do my best to respond! If you played either Rock Band or Guitar Hero before,
be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell for new videos each week. Thanks for doing
that and now let us continue on with the Rise and Fall of Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
What? ?Happened? ?to? ?Guitar? ?Hero?? ? The game that influenced Guitar Hero in the
first place was actually a very popular Japanese game called Guitar Freaks. Guitar Freaks was
created back in 1998 and it did very well in the far East. So, when the company Harmonix saw how
good it was doing out there and how many fans it had accumulated, they thought to themselves
Hey, I wonder how well a game like that would do in the Western hemisphere?
In November of 2005, they released the first Guitar Hero game with the
now nostalgic guitar-shaped controller that so many gamers still probably have
in their attics or storage units today! The game was one that brought like-minded
music lovers together like never before. But, eventually, the game simply outdid itself with
way too many releases of different versions with multiple variations of the same programming.
It was crazy how many of these they put out in the early 2000s and 2010s. So, before we go into why
they disappeared, it s only right to take a look at just how many of them were released so that
you can understand why market oversaturation is the real reason for their collapse.
Guitar Hero. This one was released on the first of November in 2005, and music lovers
everywhere simply lost their minds when they realized that there was now a blend of their
favorite songs and gaming on Playstation 2. This game made $115 million in the first week.
Guitar Hero II. About a year later, Harmonix did it again, this time adding a lot more
familiar rock tunes and putting it on not only Playstation but Xbox 360 too! Red Octane has
the publishing credits for this classic, and it sold over a million copies in 2006.
Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. 2007 is when fans of the game realized that it was here to
stay, and the summer of that year is when this third release of the game hit stores.
And oh my God, the song list was crazy! I mean, this spectacular playlist had
everything from I Ran So Far Away by A Flock of Seagulls to Bang Your Head by Quiet Riot.
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.
The company Activision has the publishing credit for this one, and it was released
just three months after the Encore Guitar Hero. The tight releases of these two in 2007 showed
signs of the upcoming overproduction of the game, which is what made everything
eventually go downhill for the franchise. Guitar Hero On Tour. They waited a year before
releasing this version of Guitar Hero, and it ended up selling around 300,000
copies in its initial week. Late June of 2008 is when it hit stores, and it was
formatted for Nintendo DS so that players could do play in career mode portably.
Guitar Hero Aerosmith. About a week later this one dropped, and focused on the classic band s
songs from the humble beginning of their careers to their eventual stardom. It s played from their
point of view, and although the On Tour version of the game had just been released a few days
earlier, this one still made $25 million in the first seven days. In fact. According to Vox,
the band actually made more revenue from this video game than any one of their studio albums!
Guitar Hero World Tour. By the fall of 2008, yet another Guitar Hero had been released.
In late October of that year, fans of the game got to experience it this time with
their own individual studio where they could develop their own original tracks.
This one was on Mac, Playstation 2 and 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and PC.
Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades. Less than a month later in mid-November of 2008,
this Decades version took it from the way back in the 1970s to the current music of the time.
This was a slant that drew more fans of the franchise in, being that there were not only
old school songs and it caught the ears of a whole new generation of younger gamers.
Guitar Hero, The Arcade Game. Being that the inspiration for Guitar Hero was actually from
a Japanese arcade game, it was not a surprise that eventually an arcade version of it was developed.
It was made in the likeness of Guitar Hero III, was set up for two-players,
and if you wanted one for your home you could get it for about $4,500 bucks!
Guitar Hero Metallica. A few days later another version was released,
this time it was dedicated to the classic band Metallica. Like the Aerosmith version,
you get to start out in the beginning of their career and work your way up, and Activision
Blizzard got lots of praise for this one from critics like ARS Technica back in 2009.
Guitar Hero On Tour: Modern Hits. After the success of the first one,
it s no surprise that they came out with another version for Nintendo DS. There were
a handful of characters to choose from on this one, and the portability factor (with the cool
pick to strum the guitar on the screen) is what attracted fans of the franchise yet again.
Guitar Hero Smash Hits. This was the third one that was released in 2009, and the market
saturation was becoming apparent at this point. What the creators did was take the songs from the
previous versions of the game and presented fans with the mastered versions of them.
Guitar Hero 5. The fifth installment of the franchise featured over 80 songs, along with
several racy themes! For example, there is a Playboy commercial with models dancing around Hugh
Heff, and although the game is categorized as Teen there is a lot of foul language and violence.
Guitar Hero Van Halen. A few months later in December of 2009, the game paid homage to another
classic band, Van Halen. You get to play as the band themselves, the game came with the classic
guitar controllers, and you could get this one for about forty bucks a pop in stores or online.
The Guitar Hero App. This was the franchise s first venture towards
the iPhone. The attractive app sold well at $3 per download.
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock. Not long after the app, they came out with this version of the game
in September of 2010. It was available on Xbox, Playstation 3, and Nintendo Wii, and was the
last version that was created by Neversoft. Guitar Hero Live. Activision set this one up so
that players could pay for and download songs that were streaming at the time,
giving them direct access to any song that they had available in their mega library of hits.
Three years later in December of 2018, the Live Guitar Hero TV shut down,
to the disappointment of its worldwide fanbase. According to Polygon, they went
from having about 500 songs to just the original 42 from the first installment of the game!
Reports pointed out how risky of a move it was in trying to move what was originally a popular
video game to a music streaming service that would only be accessible via the internet.
The live version of the game really didn t sell all that well anyway when compared
to earlier versions according to Eurogamer, and it was a sign that the franchise s positive run
for so many years was coming to an end. They did give out refunds, though. In late
2019 The Verge told the public that if they had purchased the game between 1 December of 2017
and 1 January 2019, then all they had to do was provide a receipt or some type of statement saying
that they made the purchase in order to get their money back. People have been calling for a return
of Guitar Hero to PS5 or Xbox Series X but there s been no official word coming. Hopefully more
news comes out this year though. So, What Happened to Rock Band?
Rock Band had more instruments (a microphone and drums), so it allowed for more choices
of songs than Guitar Hero. There were seven total Rock Band games
to Guitar Hero s six, and in the early to late 2000s these two music game powerhouses flooded
the video game market for a very long time. Rock Band was created originally by Harmonix,
and had several different versions which sold very well in markets across the world.
Rock Band. In November of 2007, the first Rock Band game hit the stores.
It was originally not formatted for the Nintendo Wii, but by 2008 there was a
version created for this console. It was also in 2008 that a Track
Pack version of the game was released, and it included twenty new songs.
Rock Band 2. In mid-September of 2008, the second version of the game was released,
and it had a killer list of songs that included jams like Chop Suey by System of a Down,
American Woman by The Guess Who, and Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran.
AC/DC Live Rock Band. This game featured 18 of the bands classic songs,
and if you had a Playstation 3 or an Xbox 360 you would get a special code that would allow
you to import even more content! They went on to make band dedication games
for other groups as well, such as the Beatles, Green Day, and Pearl Jam.
Rock Band Unplugged. Harmonix collaborated with Backbone Entertainment on this one,
and you could play all the instruments at one time with your regular game controller.
Rock Band 3. This one had over 80 songs, and you could play with up to seven people
at a time. It was the focus of many friendly musical game gatherings back in 2010!
Rock Band 4. In 2015, Harmonix decided that it was time to include more songs from different decades,
and that s exactly what they executed in this, the fourth of the Rock Band Franchise.
The Rock Band Track Packs. These included Volume 1, Volume 2,
a Classic Rock Track Pack, two Country Track Packs, and a Metal Track Pack. Wow!
Lego Rock Band. This was the most well-rounded of the Rock Band games,
being that it had songs on it for all ages. It was definitely the most family-focused one,
and many parents found themselves rocking out with their kids in 2009 when it was released.
There s been so many requests for Rock Band 5, but there s still no official announcements and
updates this year from the developers. If anything though, I think the chances for a new Rock Band
release seem higher than Guitar Hero but that s just my gut feeling after doing all the research.
Just like the Guitar Hero franchise, Rock Band oversaturated the market, and it was the primary
reason for its demise. There were only so many variations that they could make between game
releases that would differentiate each one from another. And, although these music rhythm games
will always be classics and very nostalgic, the chances of them making a comeback are slim.
Conclusion And that brings us to today.
Rock Band and Guitar Hero had one of the most amazing runs in video game history.
In fact, Guitar Hero 3 is actually the highest-grossing game in United States history,
making over $890 million in America alone! As a franchise, the Rock Band games actually
did a billion dollars in sales worldwide! So, even though they will likely not reach the level
of popularity that they had in the early to late 2000s - 2010s, they will never be forgotten.
Many of us want to see them make a comeback, but there has not been an official announcement of
it actually happening according to reports. So, if you want to bring those at-home jam
sessions back to life, then you re just going to have to go in your basement,
attic, or storage unit to find that old, dusty, colorful push-button guitar controller!
Long live music rhythm games!
So with that said, thank you so much for watching my video. As this is a brand-new YouTube channel I
just started this year - if you enjoy videos like this, please click the subscribe button and hit
that notification bell! I respond to all comments! If you haven t seen already, check out my gaming
videos on the Rise and Fall of Google Stadia gaming system or the Rise and Fall of Cyberpunk
2077. As always, stay happy and healthy and stay tuned for another episode of Company Insight next
week.