Gaming: January 2009 Archives
With games such as World of Warcraft that have millions of users with paid accounts it really struck me to learn that Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is the first game in history to reach $1 billion in sales. Now the entire Guitar Hero franchise, which was launched with the first Guitar Hero in 2005, had previously broken the $1 billion sales barrier, but GHIII, which was released in Fall 2007, is the first single game ever to reach that number.
The article where I read this story mentions that sales of real guitars have increased during the same time frame. I actually mentioned to my brother months ago that I would like to learn how to play the guitar (I don't think this desire was directly a result of my playing Guitar Hero, but I know that playing GH didn't hurt), and, what do you know, for Christmas he got me a super sweet Ibanez electric guitar. The thing is just gorgeous! Sadly, I think it is going to be a while before I am able to play anything on it that doesn't sound like huge chunks of metal scraping together.
Not only are sales of instruments increasing, but artists who songs appear on the game have seen increases in download sales and inspired renewed interest from consumers. To quote the article from Edge, "first-week sales of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith tripled the the first-week sales of the band's previous album." That is truly amazing.
I have always been a video game junkie. My friends have always said that video games are "my drug." Well, as we see the power of these games and how they are becoming a driving force in other forms of entertainment and artistry, I like to look back and think that I was onto something for all of those years. Was I really just a junkie, or was I a visionary? Ok, I guess it's fair to say that the people making the games were the visionaries, but I was definitely on board for the ride.
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