The world’s obsession with Guitar Hero eventually faded, likely due to franchise fatigue, but there are many that look back on the series fondly. Millennials in particular have strong feelings about Guitar Hero and the peripheral music/rhythm game fad of the mid-2000s, as many were teenagers or young adults at the time. Some may still have their plastic guitar controllers that they bring out from time to time to relive Guitar Hero’s glory days, but others have likely sold their instruments, games, and the older consoles needed to play them long ago.
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Attempts to revive the peripheral-based music/rhythm game genre have not gone all that well in recent years, but that may be because these revivals have failed to cash in on nostalgia. There are millions of millennials who grew up on Guitar Hero and may not be interested in things that shake up the formula like Guitar Hero Live tried to do, but may jump at the opportunity to play a proper Guitar Hero remake or collection that captures the spirit of the original trilogy of games.
The original Guitar Hero trilogy kept things simple by focusing entirely guitar playing. Later installments introduced more instruments to the mix like microphones and drums, and while that certainly had its appeal, getting things back to basics seems like it would be the smartest, most cost-effective move. It would be best to keep things simple, selling a copy of the game bundled with a guitar controller and giving consumers the chance to buy an extra guitar for multiplayer if they so desire.
This is the strategy that worked for the original Guitar Hero back in 2005, and it could work again. Right now Activision’s studios are almost all exclusively working on the Call of Duty franchise and the chances of a new Guitar Hero game happening are virtually nonexistent, but there is a hope for the franchise to make a comeback in the future, and if it does, it should do so by sticking as close to the original games as possible.
Microsoft plans on acquiring Activision Blizzard, which would give it control of the Guitar Hero IP. It could try to make a new kind of Guitar Hero game, or it could make one aimed directly at nostalgic millennials, using the same cover art and familiar characters from the old games to market it. Something like that could be huge and reignite the music/rhythm game fad from 2005 all over again, but for now, fans will have to make to do with playing the older Guitar Hero games on legacy systems.
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