Games developed Activision have announced that the upcoming 2011 Guitar Hero release has been cancelled, and the massively successful series of video games will be discontinued.

Despite each game in the series constantly selling bucket loads, and more than competitors such as Rock Band, the death of the video game favourite has been blamed on, you guessed it – money.

“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 publishing chief Eric Hirshberg told reporters. “Instead, what we’ll do is focus our time and energies on marketing and supporting our strong catalog of titles and downloadable content.” 

Since beginning in 2005, the Guitar Hero games combined have sold millions of copies across many platforms such as the PlayStation 3, XBox 360 and Wii consoles, generated over $2 billion in revenue for Activision, and paved the way for music themed games, and helped them become a recognizable genre that was a big sales competitor for the ever popular war, RPG and sports games.

However, industry experts suspect that Guitar Hero hasn’t seen its last days just yet. “I wouldn’t classify Guitar Hero as ‘dead,’ but rather ‘hibernating‘. It may take three to five years, and likely a whole new generation of consoles, but I see a possibility of a short revival in the future,” said Electronic Entertainment Design analyst and Research Jesse Divnich.

I certainly hope Divinch is right, I love Guitar Hero and I’m sad to hear it’s ending! While I can see the issues with paying for licensing to use the songs etc, you would think that all the sales they get from not just the game but all the hardware such as guitars, microphones, and drums, they would be able to make up the costs! Apparently not, what a shame!

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