Only a couple of years ago, games
like Guitar Hero and Rock Band were the most popular games in the entire gaming
industry. The games were finding their way into theme parks as sideshow
attractions, had queues of people waiting to play at festivals and could sell a
complete gaming set for upwards of £300. Then, suddenly, they just disappeared.
For a long time it was difficult
to find a week where a new music based game hadn’t been introduced, and songs
which had previously come and gone in the charts were finding their way back
into chart popularity purely because of people finding these songs on their
Guitar Hero playlist. But now you can find the entire Guitar Hero or Rock Band
kit, including all of the controllers and games for a fraction of the price,
and people just don’t seem too keen on playing anymore. So how did that happen?
The basic fact is that every new
idea or invention has a limited shelf life. People will get really excited
about something which seems new, and technology they haven’t experienced
before, but are unlikely to stay transfixed if the technology never changes.
After the success of Guitar Hero, companies started releasing hundreds of
different versions of the same product all of the time. For a while people
continued to buy, building up their collections, but eventually something has
to give, and when people are constantly introduced to the same product in
different guises, eventually the idea begins to wear on them. Put simply,
people got bored of paying hundreds of pounds for an experience they already
owned plenty of times over.
Not only this but as soon as
completely new games started emerging, people automatically got the buzz that
comes with a brand new piece of technology and a new experience. Dance games
which allow people to get a bit more physical and learn steps to dances they
are currently listening to have started to take over, and feature the kinds of
music that are more popular with the general public at the moment. Electronic
is in, raw guitars are out, and so people have very little interested in a rock
back from the 1980’s when they could be learning dance moves to the latest Lady
GaGa track.
