Industry site gamesindustry.biz reports that Guitar Hero 5 — which debuted in the UK on Friday — has taken to top spot in game sales for the week, beating out The Beatles: Rock Band (which arrived Wednesday) by a substantial margin.
Well, let me clarify what I mean by “a substantial margin”: GH5 entered the charts at No. 1, while The Beatles: Rock Band debuted at No. 4, trailing Colin McRae: Dirt 2 and the almost universally adored Batman: Arkham Asylum. Since there don’t appear to be any sales numbers attached to the report, the margin of sales may actually be rather small.
I don’t mean to take anything away from the excellent Guitar Hero 5, but here’s what I’m wondering: Given that the surviving members of Nirvana have made a high-profile plea to Activision to “re-lock” Kurt Cobain’s likeness in Guitar Hero 5, are any of these sales being driven by collectors, do you think?
[Read, via The Escapist]
I dunno, Rock Band never seems to have got much traction in the UK, and doesn’t seem to have been pushed very hard; the first game took six months to make it over the pond (on the 360, almost a year on other platforms), Rock Band 2 turned up in solus form with almost no fanfare (except for the Wii, for which it hasn’t been released at all yet), and there’s still no sign of the Rock Band 2 peripherals on any platform. The Guitar Hero series have been out within a month at worst of the US release dates, and promoted more heavily as well.
I thought The Beatles Rock Band would buck the trend, though, with simultaneous world-wide release, heavy publicity, and general love of the Beatles. Might be the cost putting people off; if you don’t have any of the gear (more likely with low take up of the previous games) an XBox 360 (£200), the limited edition bundle (£180) plus an extra Rickenbacker or Gretsch (£90) will set you back, according to Google conversion, $780. Be interesting to see how it does in the longer term and the run up to Christmas (plus it might take a couple of months for Beatles nuts to save up after buying both mono and stereo remastered box sets…)
Very nice analysis there. I had forgotten that Rock Band was so much less a big deal over there. I wonder if that has to do with licensing issues (for the same reason half the crap I want to watch at MTV.com is unavailable to US visitors).
$780! Yow.