A couple weeks ago, games industry website Gamasutra posted a fairly detailed story about a decline in retail sales for the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises. “U.S. Guitar Hero/Rock Band revenues are down 49% year on year,” Gamasutra wrote, “as discounted hardware and over 20 SKUs flood the market.”
And so, the news sites and the blogs dutifully reported the imminent demise of the music game, concluding that a glut of games had oversaturated the market. Reporters crowed about bubbles bursting and people “getting tired of rhythm games,”
Trouble is, that’s not remotely what the article said. Sure, revenues have declined, but as Gamasutra correctly pointed out, the decline in revenue is largely due to the fact that revenues were artificially inflated to begin with, thanks to the substantial price of entry for music games. The complete-band bundles — guitar, drums, and microphone — cost around $200 at release…but the thing is, once you own them, you don’t have to keep buying them with each new game. As a result, publishers now offer standalone games at retail, at a considerably cheaper price than the games packed with even a single guitar. And the more people buy those, the more revenues decline, until they’re at a level they should have been at all along.
Of course that could be hurting the publishers…but only if publishers were putting instruments and full-band bundles out there that weren’t getting bought. And I dunno about you, but I’d be a bit surprised to learn that either of these two mega-companies would make such an elementary mistake.
Assuming that this isn’t the case, and that publishers are manufacturing and shipping fewer of the instruments and bundles, profits could very well be going up even as revenues decline.
Now, understand, I’m not privy to those numbers. I’m just theorizing here, and the awful economy could very well have taken a serious toll on this genre. My point is simply that we shouldn’t assume a decline in revenue indicates anything about the health of the genre in this instance. Let’s reign in the doomsaying and see what this fall brings, shall we?
I agree with your assessment, although I am finding that I am inclined to buy fewer Rythym games because I no longer care to buy GH games. I used to try to own major iterations of both franchises but Activision is tossing so many stand-alone titles at us I can’t be bothered to buy them all and suffer disk swapping. Swapping between RB/GH is bad enough.
My brother has all the RB iterations and the AC/DC track pack and many many downloads and the experience of playing RB2 in an evening is so much more fulfilling then playing GH5 (even with it’s nicer party mode) for about 20 songs and then being sick of the selection.
I’ll say Beatles Rock Band is a tad different because there are 45 awesome songs to play and with such variety amongst them its an evening in a box itself… assuming you like the Beatles.
Revenues aren’t what’s really important, what is is the profit margins. Those band kits cost A LOT more to make than just the standalone game, so although the gross revenues might be decreasing, the profit margin on the items they sell may not be suffering as much (depending on their pricing of course) due to what was said, that the instruments are puchased earlier on and then standalones later on.
This doesn’t take into account the high incidence of faults with the instruments. Maybe they made them crap so we’d have to keep buying a new set every time a new game version comes out?
Well, saturation and impatience combined is what makes this effect. Musical gamers love their products, but we’re all on budgets too. Having what, 5 GH games (plus DJ Hero?), 2 RB games (plus 3 Track Packs), 2 DDRs and who know how many other titles (like Singstars) all released within 3 months, expecting IMMEDIATE turnaround.
The games *will* sell! But producing titles faster than people can keep up with them is just not a good idea, Christmas-time or not. And while I wouldn’t complain about the discounted rates they hit (*especially* as a tight-budget-gamer), dropping their bottom line too soon (like some titles are already doing) will *kill* their profitability. Some of us don’t even have a current-gen *console* yet, because it’s still beyond our means.
DJH is the perfect example – it’s a terrific, fresh product with unfortunate timing. Giving some time for players to get around to it will give it amazing results. But when there’s a big assortment of competing titles, none of which require a new peripheral (and the expense thereof), lower-to-mediocre sales is unfortunately, a natural result. It’s not because people don’t want or like the game, it’s just that their priority is getting the most game for their buck – generally by going with the software for the controller sets they already have. (Band instruments, dance pads, etc.)
A springtime “relaunch” is really all the push that the title needs to take off, remind people that saw and liked it that it’s still out there, waiting for them. The general public wants these titles – most of the gamers I know want most of the titles – but none of us can just drop a month’s worth of income on impulse like that. And sadly, in order to define these products as “successful,” that’s EXACTLY what they expect us to do.
Either that, or for everybody to get behind one title/taste, which is not only never going to happen, but it also defeats the entire purpose of producing a variety of them to begin with!
Employment (and standards thereof) is another issue – if employees have little to no earning power, then they, as consumers, have little to no buying power. If consumers can’t buy, it doesn’t matter if you’re producing golden chocolate on a stick, industries won’t have any selling power either. We’re not there yet, and I’m hoping we never will be!