World Tour Sales Half of Guitar Hero III

In a relatively disappointing showing compared to its predecessors but strong enough to beat rival Rock Band, Guitar Hero: World Tour sold half as well as Guitar Hero III and failed to crack the top ten best-selling games of October.

In its first week, Guitar Hero: World Tour sold an impressive 534,000 copies over four consoles and eleven separate store-keeping units (SKUs) including different peripherals, generating $67.3 million in revenue for publisher Activision. Profitable numbers, but it pales in comparison to the success of its predecessor Guitar Hero 3, which sold 1.39 million copies, earning $115 million.

Despite doubling Harmonix's Rock Band 2's 238,000 units sold, World Tour was unable to earn a spot in the top ten selling October games in the latest NPD release. This is likely due to the sheer amount of different bundles for multiple systems, resulting in no single package selling a spectacular amount.

The decreased year-to-year sales could be explained by the fact that the full World Tour experience, complete with drums, guitar and microphone costs $189.99. Due to the price hikes, fewer people purchased World Tour but paid 50 percent more ($82 for Guitar Hero 3 and $122 for World Tour).

Slowing sales could become a serious issue for Activision, which seems intent on iterating on Guitar Hero until every gaming groupie the series has has been tapped. If the big-budget music games could take a year off to build deep downloadable content catalogs, gamers would remain interested in the genre without feeling tired of the brands.

Source: Gamasutra, GameSpot

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I'm not sure this is truly indictive that WT is a bad game, or doesn't have the hype and sales won't improve. I think it's more the case that there were so many AAA games dropping within such a short time period, and only so much disposable income to go around.

I know I will definetly be buying GH:WT eventually, but amongst a sea of games like Fable II, End War, Fallout 3, Lich King, and much more, I can only spend so much.

Now with the holidays around the corner, money is diverted to buying gifts for others in my family who don't share my love of gaming.

I suspect that sales will improve, especially after Xmas as I hope my family is smart enough to get me Circuit City or Best Buy cards. If so, Activision can count of me picking up one along with Fallout 3 and a few others I'm jonesing for.

I completely agree, there are waaaay to many good games, that don't cost over 100 dollars to play. I have GH:WT, but at a cost of like 3 or 4 other titles that I may have to wait until after christmas to get (mirrors edge topping that list). Of course, after a while, the DLC will be large enough of a seller, as well, most people that bought just the guitar and game bundle will eventually upgrade, they will still do fine.

The Guitar Hero series peaked with Guitar Hero II (and before changing hands from Harmonix to Neversoft), I think. So many people bought GH III because they were expecting that it would be as good, but it was quite a letdown, in my opinion. So I did not go out and immediately buy World Tour like I did II or III, and I probably won't (although I did ask for it for my birthday or Christmas).

The problem with these games is they're far too expensive being released far to close together. Rock Band 2 a year on the heels of Rock Band, for instance, World Tour following really close up on GHIII (and come to think of it, Rock Band). I get NHL or Madden or those games doing year after year cookie-cutter releases: People want to play as the players they remember most recently, but a game like Guitar Hero, during which a year is basically only a different group of songs being released, means didly-squat and costs you another $80 (if you just buy the guitar).

I don't understand why they don't take, oh, I dunno, TWO years on the development cycle and make some progress, rather then rehashing the same game for next year. In the world of the PC, they call many tiny changes being made to the original game a patch (or, if there's new content, an Expansion). Only in the console world are owners forced to purchase minor alterations to their game. I mean, fixing the guitars being defective and the drum being too loud and breaking =/= Rock Band 2, it equals a new set of peripherals that you advertise as better than the original and milk another $80 out of your consumer with.