'Guitar Hero' isn't dead, says Activision

Guitar Hero has not been scrapped completely, according to publisher Activision.

Head of developer relations Dan Winters told GamesIndustry.biz that the franchise could return if the right opportunity presented itself.

"Actually, just to clarify, we're just putting Guitar Hero on hiatus, we're not ending it," he said.

"We're releasing products out of the vault - we'll continue to sustain the channel, the brand won't go away. We're just not making a new one for next year, that's all."

Winters also said that True Crime: Hong Kong, which was axed alongside Guitar Hero, would have turned out to be a "very good game".

"The question was really the size of the prize based on how good it could be," he said. "We are confident that thing would have been 80-plus. 85 maybe. They're a really talented group at United Front.

"We were really confident that they were tracking towards a very good game. The challenges in the market place right now, when you're talking about open-world games that are going to compete with titles like Red Dead Redemption, expectations for the consumer are really high."

He continued: "That would have been, and still might end up being, a very successful mid-tier opportunity for someone. But, as I said, we changed our business model to where we were going to change our business model to focus disproportionately on three big, huge monsters. Those three monsters are the Bungie, Call of Duty and Spyro titles."

Activision disbanded the Guitar Hero division earlier this year, citing "continued declines in the music genre" for failing to perform at retail.

> Feature: The rise and fall of Guitar Hero