14 DAY TRIAL // The music game genre is growing by leaps and bounds these days, as more and more customers are attracted by titles such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band for the great experience they offer and the fact that they can really bring people together in order to play tracks from their favorite bands.
This popularity has sparked some massive sales, with Activision reporting a few weeks ago that its Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock titles sold over 1 billion units worldwide, after saying that, in 2007, the franchise had broken through the 1 billion dollars in profit generated.
Now, it's time for Viacom, the parent company of Harmonix, the developer of the very popular Rock Band series, to showcase its own success. After recently being mocked by Activision, which touted the fact that Guitar Hero: World Tour outsold Rock Band 2 by 2 to 1, Viacom replies that its own music game series has reached over 10 million units shipped worldwide, with the second installment reaching 2 million units sold worldwide, despite being launched for only six months.
Although this would seem like things are going great for Viacom, the global recession has made a dent in sales, as the title didn't manage to reach its profit expectations for the last quarter of 2008. Called by Viacom the “#1 game title of 2008 by revenue across all genres,” Rock Band revenues were almost flat as compared to 2007 and it seems that a growth isn't very likely this year.
“While we remain enthusiastic about the future franchise potential for Rock Band, the impact of a slowing economy dampened consumer purchases of videogames in the quarter, resulting in lower sales of Rock Band than we had originally hoped.” said Viacom Chief Financial Officer Tom Dooley.
Hopefully, we'll see things getting better and better for the series, as Guitar Hero definitely needs a worthy rival in order to maintain a benchmark in quality for the market.