DJ Hero Sold More than 1.2 Million Units, Sequel Justified

Publisher Activision has offered information saying that DJ Hero, the music game put together by FreeStyleGame and designed to expand the audience for the Guitar Hero franchise, has actually managed to sell more than 1.2 million units on the North American market, despite the fact that initial performance in the NPD Group software chart was underwhelming. The sales numbers suggest that Activision's idea to quickly green light a sequel for DJ Hero was not as rash as initially thought.

Writing about the sales performance of Blur, the racing title launched during May which also seemed to perform poorly on debut, Dan Amrich, the social media manager for Activision, offered the new figures. He said that “What it needed was time for its audience to find it, a price break, and positive word from both friends and reviews to circulate” and that often the sales performances over the long terms are more important to the publisher than the impact the game makes in its first week or month. Amrish is suing DJ Hero to show that Blur still has the potential to be a success for the company he represents.

Activision had previously said that DJ Hero brought in the most revenue of all the new intellectual properties that were launched in 2009. The sequel will be launched at some point in the fourth quarter of this year and will use the same turntable controller that was packed with the first of the games. Activision is saying that more than 70 tracks will be included featuring performances from more than 85 artists, with confirmed performers including: Dr Dre, Chemical Brothers, Kanye West, Metallica, Lady Gaga and Rihanna. The developers are promising a more complex single player mode, called Empire, which will see the player dominate the charts as he develops his skills, alongside deeper social elements.