A sour note for Vicarious Visions

Video game company Activision announced today that it's ending the Guitar Hero series because of declining sales -- and will lay off 500 people. Vicarious Visions, the game studio based in Menands, is a subsidiary of Activision and was the developer of some versions of the game. A game industry site is reporting there have been layoffs there because of the Guitar Hero cancellation (update: we've heard from someone at the company who confirmed the layoffs). [Wired] [Develop] Earlier: A peek inside Vicarious Visions

Comments

Does the claim of "declining sales" for ending the whole video game series seem a little short-sighted to anyone... or a little far-fetched? The game still is really popular (at least within my friends), was always coming out with new releases, and has a good online presense. In today's world, it seems like there is still room for trying to continually inovate before shutting the whole thing down.

@Jessica R: In that Wired article, an industry analyst framed the situation as a decision about opportunity costs -- that there was still demand for the game, but Activision might be better off devoting the resources to developing a new series.

My sources (an employee who was spared) tell me that after the second incarnation of Guitar Hero, sales dropped steadily with each release. He didn't seem too surprised by their decision to end the franchise.

Guitar Hero was doomed to irrelevancy when Rock Band started doing the same thing but better.

Guitar Hero may have been published by Activision but it was the brain child of Harmonix. Activision and Harmonix split ways. Activision continued the GH franchise with lesser developers, and Harmonix created Rock Band.

The Harmonix story is pretty interesting. Their core mission from the very beginning was trying to create a true sense of musicality in a video game. Doing this by pushing colored buttons on plastic instruments is a lot harder than it may seem.

If you get your hands on one of the later versions of Guitar Hero and play them at the advanced levels, they just don't feel right. Ultimately it feels like Activision killed the goose that laid golden eggs. It's a pity.

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