OH SNAP VIDEO GAMES

Ever since the first Guitar Hero hero in 2005, all the games have taken the market by storm, especially Guitar Hero 3. Up until now Guitar Hero have released 10 different games, the first ones being based more on guitars. With the more recent competition Harmonix has created by releasing Rock Band, Activision have been forced to introduce new instruments to their video games.

However, with 3 new games in the pipeline, Guitar Hero are planning to get the edge over Rock Band by releasing games that are not guitar based.
Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero and DJ Hero are the 3 new Guitar Hero games that are due for release towards the end of 2009. Guitar Hero 5 is the first one to be released, this one is a normal Guitar Hero games, featuring all the instruments as well as benefitting from a 85 strong song list. This game does feature an improved guitar controller which should prove to be successful over their previous model.

Band Hero is the second one, this is pretty much the same as Guitar Hero 5, except it’s more family based. This is just one way which Activision are trying to win over the family gaming market.
The last game in the tube is DJ Hero. This is a totally new angle for Activision, and it’s a way of them trying to take a different piece of the gaming market. The game will benefit from a new controller, the DJ Deck. Because the game is for an entirely new target market, it’s difficult to tell whether the game will be successful. However, if it does prove to be successful, will we eventually see a whole new range of future Guitar Hero’s? Obviously the name would be changed from Guitar Hero. Also, if the game is successful, will Harmonix jump on the band wagon and release their own games to steal some of the market away from Activision.

There are still a large number of target markets that haven’t been looked at yet by Harmonix or Activision. One being piano players amoung us. No doubt a Piano Hero game would be popular because you would get both modern piano players, as well as more classical players who prefer to play Grand pianos.

Another angle that could be considered would be a classical version of Guitar Hero. classical guitars are hugely popular and by bringing out a video game like Classical Guitar Hero, you would almost be entering a new market because the age of the player would be different to the age of a standard Guitar Hero player.

They are just a couple of my ideas, but whether we will ever see these types of games is a different matter. The fate of these possible games all lies on whether or not DJ Hero becomes a success and how much revenue is created. Another factor that would affect the game would be whether it would make any money, this is someting Activision would have to consider.

All these problems would have to be looked at before the game is created, although, I would like to see some of these games being released in 2010.