heroes

Guitar Hero fans, rejoice: the franchise apparently hasn't played its final note.

In a GamesIndustry.biz interview published today, Dan Winters, Activision vice president of developer relations, said that the Guitar Hero franchise is simply "on hiatus."

"Actually, just to clarify, we're just putting Guitar Hero on hiatus, we're not ending it," Winters told the gaming publication. "We're releasing products out of the vault--we'll continue to sustain the channel, the brand won't go away. We're just not making a new one for next year, that's all."

Winters' comments are quite the surprise. Back in February, Activision said in an quarterly earnings statement that it had buried the franchise due to poor sales among music games.… Read more

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is the bestselling game released in the U.S. since 1995, a new report from NPD claims.

The music title has grossed sales of nearly $831 million since its launch in 2007, the research firm reported. It bested Call of Duty: Black Ops and Wii Fit, which took the second and third spots with $787 million and $736 million in total sales, respectively. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Rock Band rounded out the top five. NPD's sales figures were not adjusted to inflation.

Guitar Hero III's success in the U.… Read more

Music games might be down, but they aren't out just yet.

Game developer Ubisoft is planning to release a new guitar game, called Rocksmith, later this year. In a statement today, Ubisoft's senior vice president of marketing, Tony Key, said that the new title will prove to be "the most authentic and addicting music game ever created."

Ubisoft hopes to achieve that lofty goal by putting a real guitar in the hands of gamers, rather than the plastic guitars with buttons used in Rock Band or Guitar Hero. The title will launch with a "sizable … Read more

Not a month after pulling the plug on future installments in the Guitar Hero and DJ Hero franchises, it appears that Activision may not be entirely done with the rhythm game genre.

Kotaku reports today that Activision has begun work on a new property called Dance Hero. According to the Web site's source, the game will capitalize on the burgeoning motion-controlled dance genre, which has seen recent hits such as Harmonix's Dance Central, Ubisoft's Just Dance, and Majesco's Zumba Fitness.

Activision has not responded to a request for comment.

Read more of "Activision calling up Dance Hero?&… Read more

I went to the "Guitar Heroes" opening party last week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. While the exhibit's name might lead some to think the Met's show honors the Guitar Hero video game, Guitar Heroes instead examines the work of three craftsmen--John D'Angelico, James D'Aquisto, John Monteleone--and their place in the extended context of Italian and Italian-American instrument making.

Instruments by the three master builders have been used by some of the most influential guitarists of the 20th century, including Chet Atkins, Les Paul, George Benson, Paul Simon, Steve Miller, Mark … Read more

February 11, 2011, is truly a game-changing day. Hosni Mubarak's autocratic reign in Egypt is over, it's Jennifer Aniston's birthday, MaGaga dropped her new single Born This Way, Justin Bieber's "Never Say Never 3D" is now in theaters, and New York Fashion Week has officially begun.

Last year Erin Lee and Lani Nguyen from the fashion blog SugarRockCatWalk.com joined us in the studio to report on Fashion Week, but we're tackling the runways ourselves today and apparently the hottest trend is "belted satchels"-- a fancy name for fanny packs!

Sartorial designer Diane von Furstenberg has already released a $325 version of the "hands-free bag" that fastens around the waist, but don't call it a fanny pack--international designers are trying to edit the lexicon to "bum bags," since the word "fanny" is slang in the U.K. and Australia for the female genitalia.

The French have already started calling them "le sac banane," which references the banana-shape in the pouch, but something tells me Americans already have that area covered.… Read more

The Verizon iPhone goes on sale, and no one lines up. We'll talk about what it means for HP to bring WebOS to PCs, and why are we talking about the iPad 3 when we have yet to see the iPad 2. Plus, nothing says I love you like a hissing cockroach.

Like a great band breaking up, Guitar Hero is no more. Activision, the company behind the once-popular series of games, said today in a quarterly earnings statement that it's pulling the plug on the franchise.

The series, which has been around for six years, hasn't been profitable lately. About two years ago, the franchise had racked up more than $2 billion in sales from its various installments. But sales plummeted to the point that the latest installment in the series, Warriors of Rock, sold fewer than 100,000 copies during its debut month last September. Part of the reason is competition from a new generation of games that don't need specialized controllers, especially those for the PS3's Move and the Xbox 360's Kinect.

The brand has had many iterations, including "World Tour," which featured many notable musicians as playable characters, and mobile versions for iOS devices and Nintendo's DS series of handhelds. The game's popularity paved the way for bigger games like Rock Band, which have likely also played a role in Guitar Hero's decreased sales.

"It doesn't surprise me," said Amanda Caparoon, a Seattle bartender and music gaming fan, when told Activision was burying the brand. "There's cooler stuff now, like Rock Band. And dance-based games are where it's at now." … Read more

When researchers at Brigham Young University's School of Family Life decided to investigate the role parents play in gaming with their adolescent kids, they discovered a statistically significant gender divide.

For boys, gaming with a parent did not have much of an effect on positive behavior, aggression, family connection, and mental health. But for girls, gaming with a parent resulted in as much as a 20 percent variation on those outcomes--specifically, improving positive behavior, mental health, and family connections.

The team studied 287 families with adolescents ages 11 to 16; the boys played Call of Duty, Wii Sports, and … Read more