Guitar Hero 5 Initially Performing Well

There are a lot of videogame industry insiders who are thinking that the age of music games is past, with Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles not popping up in the NPD numbers or in the United Kingdom charts for some time and with players less inclined to pick up new releases like DJ Hero, The Beatles Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 because of the expensive nature of these titles as related to the lack of disposable currency generated by the economic crisis.

But it seems that the newest Guitar Hero release is performing well. Arvind Bhatia, who is an analyst for Stern Agee, told investors on Wednesday, one day after the launch of Guitar Hero 5, that “While timing and SKU differences make data difficult to compare to last year, our checks on Guitar Hero 5, released yesterday, indicate the game is meeting initial sales expectations at retail. We believe investor expectations for GH5 are low given the music genre of games has been under pressure all year.”

It's not clear whether the game will reach the 3.4 million, which World Tour moved in 2008 but it has high growth potential, in part because Activision is also offering a limited promotion giving away copies of the Van Halen Guitar Hero game with the newest release.

The way Guitar Hero 5 performs at retail will also be a good indicator of how other peripheral driven videogames will be performing when they are released later in the year.

Activision is also planning to release DJ Hero, which includes a plastic turntable and aims to introduce the music game genre to a larger audience, and Tony Hawk RIDE, which is reinventing the skating franchise by introducing a plastic skateboard that will be used to give certain physicality to the tricks.