Activision “Disbands” Guitar Hero Team
Activision Cancels DJ Hero
During today's Activision earnings call, the largest third party publisher in North America and Europe dropped a number of bombshells, including the death-like coma of the Guitar Hero franchise, the cancellation of True Crime: Hong Kong, and the likely no-show of a new Blizzard title this year. However, between these larger stories Activision made a number of other announcements as well as some observations on the larger state of the game publishing industry.Activision Cancels True Crime: Hong Kong
Mirroring comments made by Take-Two Interactive's (the parent company of 2K Studios) Strauss Zelnick last year, Activision bemoaned the plight of lower profile games. "Sales of mid-tier titles are being squeezed out," according to the publisher, as non-triple A and non-hardcore titles significantly underperformed sales expectations. This is likely in reference to a number of sales duds published by Activision last year, including Bizarre Creation's Blur, Raven Software's Singularity, and High Moon's Transformers: War for Cybertron, among others.