14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that in spite of the rivalry between Guitar Hero and Rock Band, most of the players who are interested in music simulators try both of them although they might not spend money on both series.
A study was conducted by GamerDNA and DFC Intelligence on a sample of 10,000 players of the Xbox 360 home gaming console who owned either Guitar Hero 5 from Neversoft and Activision Blizzard or The Beatles: Rock Band from Harmonix and MTV Games during the month of September.
The surprising conclusion is that 45% of those who own Guitar Hero 5 have also played The Beatles game, while about 34% of those who played the Harmonix title have also tried their hand at the Guitar Hero franchise. It seems that The Beatles Rock Band is better at both retaining long time fans and attracting new players, with 64% of those surveyed not familiar with the franchise and with just 46% of Guitar Hero players new to the series.
The Beatles title has probably attracted the attention of more first time music game players because of the high profile band and of the songs featured. It just might be that the time of videogames that offer songs from a variety of bands is gone and that both Rock Band and Guitar Hero will in the future battle over the right to create games for specific bands, with projects involving Queen already rumored to be in the pipeline.
Jeremy Miller, who is an analyst for DFC Intelligence, said that “This high cross play figure indicates significant interest in music games in general among a large portion of the user base,” but can also lead to some trouble for the publishers as buyers might at some point choose one franchise over the other, especially if the difference in quality is clear.