According to superstar analyst Michael Pachter, music games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero made a massive $1.4 billion in 2008. This year will see half that catch says Pachter.
Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour are being hailed as the games that pulled us all in last year, but the analyst says that too much content was given away and we're unlikely to need much more new stuff anytime soon.
"(Game) publishers have probably done themselves a disservice by giving us way too much value for our money with each of these games," Pachter explained. "You just get way too much content. The installed base has a lot of music, and they don't really need a lot more. It's sort of like buying more books when you have a stack of books left to read. You just don't."
The stat-crunching NPD Group says that despite big hitting launches of The Beatles: Rock Band, Guitar Hero 5, DJ Hero, Band Hero and the soon-to-be-released Guitar Hero: Van Halen (Dec. 22) sales haven't met expectations.
"There isn't a game that we would expect to have more widespread appeal than that. And yet with the installed base of music-game owners at around 20 million, it boggles the mind that only 800,000 bought Beatles: Rock Band."
The problem is the tracklists have really gone downhill in the newer Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. The focus shifted from songs with good guitar parts to songs which fit the market they were aiming for.
And there's plenty of people who aren't interested in the single-band boxes either. I'm a big Aerosmith fan but even that couldn't make me buy that pack - there's not enough of their good songs on it and I'm not paying for DLC out of the box.
The same thing happened with the Beatles one - it was blatantly obvious they were holding back some of the best tracks to get more money. And I expect Van Halen will be the same - I'm surprised Eruption isn't being held for DLC.
I imagine not being able to use tracks you bought for previous iterations is also turning a lot of people off. Rock Band 1&2 have all the staying power in this situation - good for gamers, not great for sales.
I think he's also not taking into consideration that just because there is more songs not all of them is going to be to everyone's liking. So it's more like saying there are hundreds of books available but you might only like five of them, and someone else might only like two.
And the thing with The Beatles is that not everyone likes them (shock horror), or is willing to pay the extra dosh for songs with fancy graphics they could be paying for less as DLC
I saw the day of the genre's collapse as soon as I saw the day of its rise. It's a well-exploited one, with players taken for granted with money (thin on content, substantial material as 'extras', high price for prehipals). How many music games have come out in this year alone now? How many comapnies released them? Loads, and 2, respectively. People will get bored/fed up.
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