Upon learning of the cancellation of the Guitar Hero franchise, everyone started debating on what went wrong. We know the plastic instrument-based genre had fallen on hard times, but what exactly led to that reality? A lot of people will tell you Activision squeezed the franchise dry after releasing a large number of Guitar Hero games in a short period of time. One of those people is Kelly Sumner, who used to be the CEO of RedOctane.

Dance Dance Revolution may have solidified the interactive music game genre for pop culture and Guitar Hero might have taken air guitar to a new level but DJ Hero truly makes playing with music a realistically immersive and enjoyable gaming experience.

Much like those other music games, queued notes fly at you from a rainbow and you must press buttons at just the right time to hit the right note. The difference here is that there are other moves thrown in including a scratch (flicking the turntable quickly), rewind (quickly rotating the turntable for a revolution) and sliding (moving a slide bar to the left or right). There are also subtle variations on the scratching (direction, length and duration).

A new PlayStation Home world called Backstage with Guitar Hero just opened on March 27, 2009, and already fans of the Guitar Hero franchise have poured into the new game space to rock out with friends.

According to Carlson Choi, director of Interactive Marketing at Activision/Blizzard, the idea for the “Backstage with Guitar Hero” game space began nine months ago with Sony.

It turns out that Guitar Hero: World Tour isn’t shaping up to be a sensational seller, like the other entries in the series. The New York Times is reporting that World Tour sold roughly 534,000 copies in the week after it was released, while Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock managed to sell around 1.4 million copies in the week after it launched. So, based on those early figures, one could reason that World Tour is only a third as successful as Legends of Rock. Perhaps this means that Rock Band is having an incredibly visible impact on Guitar Hero‘s sales. Or, it could be an indication that people are cutting back on extravagant video game purchases.

Guitar Hero: World Tour, which is the fourth entry in the series and the first to incorporate instruments other than guitars into the game, was launched on October 26, 2008…

In November 2005, RedOctane launched the first Guitar Hero game which was an instant hit and changed the music game genre forever. It is to music games, what Wii is to video gaming in general – a breath of fresh, innovative air. In the 26 months the Guitar Hero series has been around it has more »

Activision isn’t content to have one massive Guitar Hero release out for the holidays. The company has just released a second dose of Guitar Hero for fans who may just have joined the bandwagon. Activision began shipping a new dual pack that contains Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II on November 7, 2007, for Playstation more »

Good news for PS2-playing Guitar Hero fans – Target, Activision, and RedOctane have teamed up to create an exclusive bundle for the PS2 version of Guitar Hero 3. Available only at Target, the bundle includes a copy of GH3, two specially designed guitar controllers, and a “customization kit” with stickers and guitar straps. The package more »