If you look at the way the gaming community talks aboutGuitar HeroandRock Band, you’d think that the latter is dominating the former. Especially on Destructoid, people were quick to jump ship from Activision to EA whenRock Bandwas released, and often looks uponGuitar Heronowadays with disdain.
Activisionprobably doesn’t care, however, if its claim of domination in the music game market is to be believed. According to CEO Bobby Kotick,Guitar Herois currently outsellingRock Bandby 600%.
“We’re outselling [Rock Band] 6:1. When you think about the access we have to 30 percent of the world’s music at Universal, we have a unique advantage there.
I would also say when you look at resources, you know, our next-nearest competitor has a couple of hundred people working on these projects, we have close to 2,000 people just dedicated to theGuitar Heronote tracking, introduction of new hardware, introduction of new software, and so we just have a lot more in the way of resources available to us to continue to dominate the category.”
Of course, Activision is helped by the fact thatGuitar Herohas two sequels and a couple of spin-offs while so far, the youngerRock Bandfranchise consists of two installments, one of which was only released recently. That said,Guitar Herowas the first music game sinceDDRto make a huge mainstream splash, so it’s not surprising to see thatRock Bandhasn’t been able to replace it in the minds of the average consumer.
