With the introduction of Guitar Hero World Tour in 2008, the game includes support for a four-player band including vocals and drums. The series initially used mostly cover version of songs created by WaveGroup Sound, but most recent titles feature soundtracks that are fully master recordings, and in some cases, special re-recordings, of the songs. Later titles in the series feature support for downloadable content in the form of new songs.
In 2005, RedOctane, a company specializing in the manufacture of unique game controllers, was inspired to create Guitar Hero based on RedOctane's experience creating hardware for Konami's GuitarFreaks arcade game. They enlisted Harmonix Music Systems, who previously developed several music video games, for development assistance. The first game in the series was made on a budget of $1 million. The series became extremely successful, leading to the acquisition of RedOctane by Activision in 2007. Harmonix was acquired by MTV Games and went on to create the Rock Band series of music games in the same vein as Guitar Hero. Activision brought Neversoft (primarily known for their Tony Hawk series of skateboarding games) on board for future development duties. Additional companies, such as Vicarious Visions, Budcat Creations, Machineworks Northwest, and Aspyr Media have assisted in the adoption of the games for other systems.
The series currently has seven major releases and four expansions on gaming consoles. There are spin-offs for Windows and Macintosh systems, mobile phones, the Nintendo DS, and an arcade game. The Guitar Hero franchise was a primary brand during the emergence of the popularity of rhythm games as a cultural phenomenon in North America. Such games have been utilized as a learning and development tool for medical purposes. The first game in the series was considered by several journalists to be one of the most influential video games of the first decade of the 21st century. The series has sold more than 25 million units worldwide, earning US$2 billion at retail, claimed by Activision to be the 3rd largest game franchise after the Mario and Madden NFL franchises; the third main title of the series, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is also claimed by Activision to be the first single video game title to exceed $1 billion in sales. Despite early success, the series, along with the overall rhythm game genre, suffered from poor sales starting in 2009, and in early February 2011, Activision disbanded further development of the series, though later clarified that the series is on hiatus for 2011.
Guitar Hero was created from a partnership between RedOctane, then their own company that produced specialized gaming controllers, and Harmonix Music Systems, a music video game development company who had previously produced Frequency, Amplitude and Karaoke Revolution. RedOctane was seeking to bring in a GuitarFreaks-like game, highly popular at the time in Japan, into the Western markets, and approached Harmonix about helping them to develop a music game around a guitar controller. Both companies agreed to it, and went on to produce Guitar Hero in 2005. The title was highly successful, leading to the development of its successful sequel Guitar Hero II in 2006. While initial controllers for the first Guitar Hero game were designed and built by the Honeybee Corporation of China, subsequent iterations and future controllers were developed inhouse at RedOctane, with development led primarily by Jack McCauley.
Both RedOctane and Harmonix experienced changes in 2006. RedOctane was bought by Activision in June—who spent US$100 million to acquire the Guitar Hero franchise—while it was announced in October that Harmonix would be purchased by MTV Networks. As a result of the two purchases, Harmonix would no longer develop future games in the Guitar Hero series. Instead, that responsibility would go to Neversoft, a subsidiary of Activision known for developing the Tony Hawk's series of skateboarding games. Neversoft was chosen to helm the Guitar Hero series after Neversoft founder, Joel Jewett, admitted to the RedOctane founders, Kai and Charles Huang, that his development team for Tony Hawk's Project 8 went to work on weekends just to play Guitar Hero. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick believed that Neversoft would help them bring great games to the series, but on reflection, state that had Activision explored Harmonix further as a continued developer for the series, things "may have turned out differently". In addition, Activision began seeking other markets for the game; a Nintendo DS version of the series was developed by Vicarious Visions, while a Guitar Hero Mobile series was created for mobile phones. The company also began considering the expansion of the series to band-specific titles with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Later, in November 2008, Activision acquired Budcat Creations, another development studio that had helped with the PlayStation 2 versions of Guitar Hero III and World Tour, announcing that they will be helping to develop another game in the Guitar Hero series.
In 2007, Harmonix and MTV Games released a new music title through rival publisher Electronic Arts, called Rock Band. It expanded upon the gameplay popularized by the Guitar Hero series by adding drum and microphone instruments, allowing players to simulate playing songs as bands. Activision followed suit with the release of Guitar Hero World Tour in 2008, which supported multiple instruments. In 2009, Activision tripled its Guitar Hero offerings, and in addition to further continuation of the existing main series with Guitar Hero 5 and expansions, they introduced the titles Band Hero, geared towards more family-friendly pop music, and DJ Hero, a game based on turntablism and featuring a number of mixes. With the release of Guitar Hero 5, Activision has considered the series to move away from its heavy metal basis into a more rounded selection of music. Guitar Hero 5 is the first game in the series to use a new version of the series' logo. Previous logos for games used a font with sharper "points" on the letters, which was considered "idiosyncratic with a vengeance" to match the emphasis on heavy metal music that the previous games had. Activision used the services of the Pentagram design studio to refashion the game's logo. Pentagram developed a new font, removing some of the "aggressive odd" features to make the typeface more suitable and amendable to design feature incorporation to other games such as Band Hero and DJ Hero.
The results of the expanded offerings did not contribute well to the series, alongside the late-2000s recession; sales of most rhythm games including Guitar Hero and DJ Hero did not meet expectations, falling about 50% short of projected targets. Activision announced it would be cutting back to only 10 SKUs within 2010 instead of the 25 in 2009. Though RedOctane and Neversoft continued to develop the 6th main game, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, until its completion, both studios were since shuttered by Activision, moving key personnel into Activision directly for future game development, and in the case of Neversoft, closing its Guitar Hero division, while transferring future development duties for the series to Vicarious Visions, another Activision studio which has been fundamental in building the Wii and Nintendo DS versions of the games. In November 2010, Activision also closed Budcat Creations, the arm of the publisher that was primarily responsible for porting the Guitar Hero games to the PlayStation 2.
Ahead of Activision's 2010 fourth quarter financial report in February 2011, Activision disbanded its Guitar Hero business unit and announced that it would cease development of the planned 2011 Guitar Hero game. Activision cited "continued declines in the music genre" towards its decision. The closure also affected the DJ Hero series, as Activision stated that there were no plans to publish a music game during 2011. No further downloadable content for either Guitar Hero or DJ Hero has been made since February 2011, though Activision later committed to releasing content that was already in development due to fan response. Activision's vice president Dan Winters later clarified that "we're just putting Guitar Hero on hiatus" and "We're just not making a new [game] for next year, that's all." In a July 2011 interview with Forbes, Kotick stated that while the publisher is "going to stop selling Guitar Hero altogether", they are "going to go back to the studios and we're going to use new studios and reinvent" the series. The original Guitar Hero was released on the PlayStation 2 in November 2005. Guitar Hero is notable because it comes packaged with a controller peripheral modeled after a black Gibson SG guitar. Rather than a typical gamepad, this guitar controller is the primary input for the game. Playing the game with the guitar controller simulates playing an actual guitar, except it uses five colored "fret buttons" and a "strum bar" instead of frets and strings. The development of Guitar Hero was inspired by Konami's GuitarFreaks arcade game, which at the time, had not seen much exposure in the North American market; RedOctane, already selling guitar-shaped controllers for imported copies of GuitarFreaks, approached Harmonix about creating a game to use an entirely new Guitar controller. The concept was to have the gameplay of Amplitude with the visuals of Karaoke Revolution, both of which had been developed by Harmonix. The game was met with critical acclaim and received numerous awards for its innovative guitar peripheral and its soundtrack, which comprised 47 playable rock songs (most of which were cover versions of popular songs from artists and bands from the 1960s through modern rock). Guitar Hero has sold nearly 1.5 million copies to date. The popularity of the series increased dramatically with the release of Guitar Hero II for the PlayStation 2 in 2006. Featuring improved multiplayer gameplay, an improved note-recognizing system, and 64 songs, it became the fifth best-selling video game of 2006. The PlayStation 2 version of the game was offered both separately and in a bundle with a cherry red Gibson SG guitar controller. Guitar Hero II was later released for the Xbox 360 in April 2007 with an exclusive Gibson Explorer guitar controller and an additional 10 songs, among other features. About 3 million units of Guitar Hero II have sold on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360.
In 2005, RedOctane, a company specializing in the manufacture of unique game controllers, was inspired to create Guitar Hero based on RedOctane's experience creating hardware for Konami's GuitarFreaks arcade game. They enlisted Harmonix Music Systems, who previously developed several music video games, for development assistance. The first game in the series was made on a budget of $1 million. The series became extremely successful, leading to the acquisition of RedOctane by Activision in 2007. Harmonix was acquired by MTV Games and went on to create the Rock Band series of music games in the same vein as Guitar Hero. Activision brought Neversoft (primarily known for their Tony Hawk series of skateboarding games) on board for future development duties. Additional companies, such as Vicarious Visions, Budcat Creations, Machineworks Northwest, and Aspyr Media have assisted in the adoption of the games for other systems.
The series currently has seven major releases and four expansions on gaming consoles. There are spin-offs for Windows and Macintosh systems, mobile phones, the Nintendo DS, and an arcade game. The Guitar Hero franchise was a primary brand during the emergence of the popularity of rhythm games as a cultural phenomenon in North America. Such games have been utilized as a learning and development tool for medical purposes. The first game in the series was considered by several journalists to be one of the most influential video games of the first decade of the 21st century. The series has sold more than 25 million units worldwide, earning US$2 billion at retail, claimed by Activision to be the 3rd largest game franchise after the Mario and Madden NFL franchises; the third main title of the series, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is also claimed by Activision to be the first single video game title to exceed $1 billion in sales. Despite early success, the series, along with the overall rhythm game genre, suffered from poor sales starting in 2009, and in early February 2011, Activision disbanded further development of the series, though later clarified that the series is on hiatus for 2011.
Guitar Hero was created from a partnership between RedOctane, then their own company that produced specialized gaming controllers, and Harmonix Music Systems, a music video game development company who had previously produced Frequency, Amplitude and Karaoke Revolution. RedOctane was seeking to bring in a GuitarFreaks-like game, highly popular at the time in Japan, into the Western markets, and approached Harmonix about helping them to develop a music game around a guitar controller. Both companies agreed to it, and went on to produce Guitar Hero in 2005. The title was highly successful, leading to the development of its successful sequel Guitar Hero II in 2006. While initial controllers for the first Guitar Hero game were designed and built by the Honeybee Corporation of China, subsequent iterations and future controllers were developed inhouse at RedOctane, with development led primarily by Jack McCauley.
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The results of the expanded offerings did not contribute well to the series, alongside the late-2000s recession; sales of most rhythm games including Guitar Hero and DJ Hero did not meet expectations, falling about 50% short of projected targets. Activision announced it would be cutting back to only 10 SKUs within 2010 instead of the 25 in 2009. Though RedOctane and Neversoft continued to develop the 6th main game, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, until its completion, both studios were since shuttered by Activision, moving key personnel into Activision directly for future game development, and in the case of Neversoft, closing its Guitar Hero division, while transferring future development duties for the series to Vicarious Visions, another Activision studio which has been fundamental in building the Wii and Nintendo DS versions of the games. In November 2010, Activision also closed Budcat Creations, the arm of the publisher that was primarily responsible for porting the Guitar Hero games to the PlayStation 2.
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