Guitar Hero’s European boss jokes about the competition, but is very serious about growing market share
Activision has told MCV it will keep aggressively growing its share of the music category through retail collaborations, new promotions and expansion to new genres.
The publisher was celebrating this week after the Guitar Hero franchise secured its first number one – Guitar Hero 5 managed to top the UK All Formats chart in just two days.
The game beat The Beatles: Rock Band, which had been on the market a few days longer and launched around Beatlemania hype.
It all bodes well as the firm plans to launch its DJ Hero and Band Hero games towards Christmas – despite the influx of other music games – according to Michael Sportouch, the European head of the Guitar Hero franchise.
“We are the clear leader of the category,” he said in an exclusive interview.
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“I’m not here to talk about the competition, but one of our competitors we outsell nine to one, eight to one or seven to one depending on the week. The last GfK research showed that we have a 50 per cent market share of the music category – which includes Rock Band, Wii Music, SingStar and every other music game. That doesn’t mean we are complacent, we still have lots of consumers to attract and educate.”
But what of the pressure on retail to fit more and more different guitar, microphone and instrument packages onto store shelves?
He said: “One thing I do say to retailers is that they should stop selling those rival products which don’t sell through, and instead focus on the products that are selling through and generate retail value and return on investment.
“In order to keep our retail activity strong we have pursued a number of innovative retail executions. So far on Guitar Hero we have a very strong sell through curve and sell through ratio and we want to ensure that continue to stimulate demand. Retailers want to see those products keep moving in and out of the store – that’s something we work very closely with them on.”
Comments
Hmm...Michael, Michael...Michael...
...Your bringing up a ratio of 9:1, 8:1 and 7:1 depending on the week, How many GH games are there compared to RB games?
Well there are at least 12 different GH games out there, and Just 4 different Rockband games. Now as much as the ratio should be closer, I think it's quite disrespectful to joke about the competition, which I may add get better review scores than your games :-)
And yes I won't hide.. I prefer RB to GH.
Nah
Rock Band is a direct competitor to GH, so a like-for-like comparison is fair.
RB and GH
We have both, and I far prefer Rock Band to Guitar Hero. It sells because of hype and marketing. and because RB has not got such a big catalogue, but it will, and when it does, it SHOULD beat GH. The peripherals are nicer to play with in RB. Activision are arrogant and complacent and should, and maybe will, lose audience as people realise it.
RB & GH
"because RB has not got such a big catalogue"
It may not have a large game catalogue, but the music library on the games are incredible. DLC every tuesday? Can't go wrong, and this is one of my main reasons why I prefer it.
Rock Band Rocks
I prefer RB and was an original GH freak.
The music choice is better and the DLC fantastic.
I looked at GH5 songlist and couldn't find more than a handful I would be keen to play. I'll wait until those songs are released on RB DLC and just buy them then.
GH should drop the full game price to £24.95 and focus making money on selling their own add-on tracks instead.
odd
I think this man forgets that its the rock band makers that gave them the GH success in the first place!
'Educate'
Really, Did activision say that? Educate. HA HA HA Someone wants to educate them about good customer relations and service. Also about how to be humble in your victory when you have the competition outnumbered. In the US GH5 was selling well because people were being offered Van Halen for free. Here we get a lame offer of last years title. It's why I have recently moved to rock band. I have not looked back. Far better catalogue. Miles better in fact and cheaper too. On top of that Harmonix are allowed to have fun at work.
GH5 worst music game ever!!
I love the way that nearly everywhere i read everyone preferes rock band to guitar hero, truely rock band is the original (in tems of harmonix making it) and the best. I bought GH5 and its just awful with hardly any good songs, yes guitar hero 5 has sold most, but only because of its hype, but i play rock band about 20x more often than i play any of the guitar hero games.
Rock band is best for its games
guitar hero are good at making the instruments
and singstar is just the best singing game with the BIGGEST downladable content library thats what i think
and wii music is just a fail and shouldnt have been mentioned atall.
Play Guitar
Learning to play guitar is something that you will need to think of as a long term effort and isn't something that you can do in an evening, a week or even a month. It requires a variety of skills that take both time and effort to master. The most effective way to learn is to take lessons with a teacher or work with a more experienced friend who can show you how they learned.
Really???
I can't believe how many people here are sticking up for RB have you played it??? its the little things that make GH better gameplay for a start the circles coming down the screen much sharper than the thin little black on RB. The guitar buttons feel terrible dont even feel like im hitting them. ok GH5 songs are not there best and I was hoping for some new features but across the range GH is without doubt the better version. I know your all going to stick up for it but really you see the facts GH out sells RB not because it has more versions GH5 outsold RB Beatles and that was a fair battle in my eyes and what happened it came 4th not even second I rest my case there.!!
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