Activision: 'No new music or skateboarding games' this year [Joystiq]

[DP ServBot]

The grim fates of True Crime and whatever installment of the Guitar Hero series that was in development are known -- but what about Activision's other perennial franchises? A few (equally grim) details surfaced during Activision's investor's call today, during which COO Thomas Tippl explained, "We will release no new music or skateboarding games" during the current calendar year.

Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg added some more insight into the company's attention shift away from the music genre, explaining that even though DJ Hero 2 and Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock were well-received, "demand for peripheral-based music games declined at a dramatic pace. Given the considerable licensing and manufacturing costs associated with this genre, we simply cannot make these games profitably based on current economics and demand." Activision's now focusing on supporting the install bases it already has with its previous entries in the genre.

That still leaves a lot of questions -- for instance, what's the fate of DJ Hero 3D? What about the Tony Hawk series-at-large? Activision's frequently spoken about its staying power -- and if no Hawk title drops in 2011, it would be the first calendar year in the franchise's history without a new entry. We've contacted our contacts, and hope to have answers on these soon.Activision: 'No new music or skateboarding games' this year originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.




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[megasdkirby]

I'm still waiting for "The Ride" to hit $20 anytime soon. Not that I will play with it, though.

My suggestion is to simply skip on music games until the next gaming generation. Give time for the "overload" and saturation to dim in order to bring them out once more.

[The 1 2 P]

I'm still waiting for "The Ride" to hit $20 anytime soon.

The PS3 version is $27.99 at Best Buy.

The Tony Hawk series getting the ax isn't that surprising because they just lost focus. And I think people really didn't want a new TH game every year but that was Activisions initiative and they paid for it.

[Flack]

I don't think our living room coat closet could take another year's worth of music games. We've already got guitars and drums and all sorts of instruments piled up in there. I realize it's not totally realistic to expect all 3rd-party controllers to be compatible with each other, but there comes a time when enough is enough. Ya bled us dry, guys.

[kupomogli]

The grim fates of True Crime

That's some bullshit. I actually didn't hear about this until now. True Crime actually looked pretty awesome. The combat system looked well done and chasing down criminals looked well done. It's like they put "ALOT" of work in this game, set to be released last year but delayed to the middle of this year. Why are they going to scrap something that's as close to completion as it was? Why couldn't they have kept a minimal amount of people to finish it up and then lay them off once the job is complete. The game would get completed as well as the development group behind it would have made more money than getting laid off immediately.

[Compute]

Wait, you mean we won't see Emcee Hero this year? I was really looking forward to Tony Hawk 27, I heard they added even more retarded story dialog.

[Greg2600]

Think we need Activision to go out of business.

[CelticJobber]

CoD will probably be next, after they start putting out new titles ever quarter.

Activision sucks.

[Snapple]

They didn't have to kill Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk. They could've just, you know, not oversaturated the market and kept pumping out games more often than people wanted.

I mean, it's at the point where both of those franchises HAD to be killed, but it didn't have to be this way if they'd handled it differently, is what I'm trying to say.

[YoshiM]

Wait, wait...the Tony Hawk franchise had a new game every year? Dang, never paid that much attention to the whens...just at the amount of T.H. titles.

[The 1 2 P]

They didn't have to kill Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk. They could've just, you know, not oversaturated the market and kept pumping out games more often than people wanted.

Activision's new focus is to release atleast one game a year in all of their franchises. So if doing that leads to them not making any profit(as was the case for Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero) then you won't be seeing those franchises anymore.

[Gameguy]

Why not just combine a few of the franchises to reduce development costs while appealing to a wider audience?

Tony Hawk's Air Guitar Hero: True Crime in Hong Kong could be huge success, play air guitar while skateboarding as Tony Hawk as he takes on the crime underworld in Hong Kong.

[j_factor]

Wait, why is True Crime canceled? It's been several years since the last one came out.

[kupomogli]

Wait, why is True Crime canceled? It's been several years since the last one came out.

Exactly. While it did need a bit of touching up, look how amazing the gameplay footage looked. It really makes me wonder how close Scarface 2 was to being finished back when it was announced and cancelled(same day.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEjF-bMaAlI

[Necron99]

Face it guys, Activision sucks. on top of all that, they are raping Spyro as well.

In the last five years, I've bought 2 Activision titles, Guitar Hero 3(technically 2 as well since activision worked on it somehow) and DJ Hero. both were disappointments for different reasons.

[bangtango]

Wait, why is True Crime canceled? It's been several years since the last one came out.

Right, I don't see why True Crime has to pay the price just because some Guitar Hero or Tony Hawk games flopped.