According to Activision’s latest financial statement released today, we can all say goodbye to the Guitar Hero franchise. The mega-publisher has decided to axe the Guitar Hero franchise and the latest in the True Crime series, True Crime: Hong Kong. Freestyle Games, the makers of DJ Hero, have also reportedly suffered “severe layoffs”. There is currently no word if the DJ Hero series has suffered from these layoffs.
“Due to continued declines in the music genre, the company will disband Activision Publishing’s Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011,”
said Activision in the financial statement. They also went on to confirm the cancellation of True Crime: Hong Kong.
“The company also will stop development on True Crime: Hong Kong. These decisions are based on the desire to focus on the greatest opportunities that the company currently has to create the world’s best interactive entertainment experiences.”
We will update this story if more information comes from Activision.
UPDATE:
According to Activsion’s “Social Media Guy” Dan Armich, the Guitar Hero series may not be dead. In a new entry to his blog series titled “Fact Check”, he discussed that the Guitar Hero franchise may just be taking a break and that members of the video game press are blowing the news out of proportion.
While news of Guitar Hero’s death may be greatly exaggerated, Dan also attacked the video game press for not checking their sources before reporting on the death of Guitar Hero. However, Dan and other PR representatives at Activision failed to respond to fact-checking emails from members of the video game press including Ben Gilbert of Joystiq.
DOUBLE UPDATE:
Now that the dust has settled on this massive story, it has been revealed that the current Guitar Hero game Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock will no longer have DLC support after this month. The official Guitar Hero Twitter account posted this late tonight:
We will release the previously announced DLC track and mix packs for February, but we will not be able to release new DLC packs
