John-ShepardIt took only a few years for the music/rhythm genre to go from being worth billions to being a barely recognizable blip on the industry's radar.
Guitar Hero 's fall from grace has been well documented, so maybe it isn't surprising to learn that Activision was forced to kill off a new franchise installment while the embattled project was in the midst of development at Vicarious Visions.
According to Kotaku , this new effort would've boasted a six-string guitar, no drums or singing, and was canceled in 2011. But most interesting was the fact that it was to be very different from previous series iterations, as it was supposed to return to the franchise's roots. So yeah, just all about the guitar.
Early prototypes for the guitar in question had been made, but they unfortunately didn't meet performance expectations and were simply too expensive. Evidently, the source claimed the strings were "unresponsive and loose" and worse, no one could figure out how to make the thing affordable. It seemed like development was going along well at first but when they got further into the process, it became clear that the studio's lofty ambitions were causing serious problems. Here's part of the source's comment on the situation:
"When the songs started coming in, a great sense of dread came about everyone with an active brain. The game had all of the worst hits from the 1990's. They realized that, with our lack of budget and time, they couldn't get quality music so they bought bargain basement music like 'Closing time' and 'Sex and Candy.' There were some songs in there that had been used at least three times in the Guitar Hero franchises before."
It was known as "Guitar Hero 7" and it never saw the light of day. But considering the state of the declining music genre over the past few years, we can understand why.
I blame Activision for over-saturating the market with Guitar Hero in the first place, and speeding along the demise of the genre. Leave the integration of real instruments to Rock Band and Rocksmith.
sad.
ive really enjoyed the series and its about time we saw a new one!
its sad to see it go out the way it did, but it was inevitable it was just being milked too much!
i still believe they could bring it back though, maybe as a downloadable title.
BUT, and its a BIG BUT, it HAS to be GUITAR hero, not pop hero, not rap hero, GUITAR hero!
the first had such a kick a$$ soundtrack!
the second was ok, but everything from there on out was pretty poor.
we need to go back to the pinnacle of rock music, and bring out another nail to the bone guitar hero!
theres still a market out there for it, if they get the soundtrack right!
Why? Because Guitar Hero came out first? There is no reason why the rest of the instruments can't exist.
DJ Hero was a cooler idea than Guitar Hero.
Granted, I had some fun with Guitar Hero. My friends and I had a blast with Rock Band too (we still do once in a while). But the truth is, now that we have Rocksmith I have no desire to pick up a toy guitar. I can just jack in my Squire Strat and play, and that is a beautiful thing.
Next on my wishlist, Drumsmith! Though, granted, that would be far more difficult and far less accessible to the average Joe so it's probably a pipe dream, but one can dream 🙂
i was going to say it sounds like rocksmith had a little to do with this cancel as well, i have every single rock band and guitar hero game because i was an addict, but as the guitar hero titles went on they got way to shitty, the last good guitar hero was 3 and then rock band was pretty much the way to go. i would totally buy a new guitar hero if it was just guitars and had a good soundtrack.