Don’t get your hopes up, folks: Guitar Hero is well and truly dead. In a recent interview with CNBC however, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick wasn’t entirely damning to the franchise. When asked about the reasons for Guitar Hero‘s sudden death, Kotick answered:
“If something’s not working, we’ll take it off the table… Maybe reinvent it in the future.”
I’ll reiterate: Guitar Hero is dead, buried, and certainly not seeing a release in 2011/2012. With 7 Studios gone, and Vicarious Visions hit by severe layoffs, there is no way we’ll be seeing a new rhythm-based music game from Activision any time in the near future. This latest quote from Kotick does go some way to reassure fans of the rhythm genre, however; although some will simply see 2005-2011 as ‘that time when Music games were a big thing’, others of us will see it as something altogether special — something that no other medium could replicate.
During the interview, it was also interesting to see Kotick make reference to Rock Band, the Harmonix-developed rhythm game. Although he did state that he thought last year’s Rock Band 3 was “a great title”, he was adamant that the genre wasn’t one that was getting consumers excited anymore.
So, if the rhythm-game genre does see a resurgence in a few years, how would it be “reinvented”? What would it take to make you interested once again? Let us know in the comments below.