14 DAY TRIAL // Guitar Hero is one of the most popular music game franchises out there. It paved the way for this genre to overtake the sports one and was a true innovator in terms of gameplay for these titles. The most recent addition in the series is Guitar Hero: World Tour, which brings even more features than the previous ones.
Although most of these innovations, like vocal and drum playing, were borrowed from the main rival of the game, Rock Band, players can definitely see some improvements over Harmonix’s title. The song creation tool is one of the biggest features of this game, allowing players to create their own musical tracks and share them with friends.
Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, the publisher of Guitar Hero, recently spoke about the latest financial results of the company, expressing his thoughts on further monetizing the popular music game. He went on to say that subscription systems, like the one employed in the company’s very popular World of Warcraft MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), had been the main source of considerable profits for Activision Blizzard.
He then predicted that such a system might be employed for Guitar Hero, especially considering the popularity of the song creation tool. "The ability to offer these songs on a subscription basis may very well result in the newest subscription opportunity in our portfolio," said Kotick, predicting that, by the end of the Holiday season, over 100,000 songs would be created by users.
This move definitely won’t be appreciated by fans, as most of them will think that Activision Blizzard is just trying to make a quick profit out of their own work. Let’s just hope that the prices won’t be unreasonably high, or the company might face a pretty violent backlash from customers.