In the interview, Spencer talked about not quite “getting” the gameplay of the first Destiny game, and things only really clicking for him with the release of the first Destiny expansion, House of Wolves.

“I’ve passed on some of the worst… Like, made some of the worst game-choice decisions,” Spencer went on to explain. “An interesting one is when this team came down to Redmond and Alex Rigopulos, he pitches a game where they’re actually going to make plastic guitars, and they’re going to plug into consoles, and they’re going to sell tracks where you’re going to play Simon on this guitar and I’m like, really? Do we really think that’s going to work?”

Referring to Guitar Hero in the story, Spencer then laughed about the title being quite successful back when it was released on PS2. He then spoke about how he doesn’t dwell on his mistakes and doesn’t regret these decisions.

“I’m not a regrets-type person,” he said. “Maybe that’s a fault of mine, but I passed on so many games. I could look back and say […] but no, I try to look forward and be positive about the things that we are doing..”

Earlier this year, Spencer spoke about how shutting down some of Microsoft’s first-party studios, including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks were “hard decisions” that were made for “sustainable business”. The studios were known for developing games like Prey, Hi-Fi Rush, and The Evil Within series.

Back in June, Spencer also expressed an interest in bringing more of Xbox’s games to other platforms in light of the success seen by the multiplatform release of Sea of Thieves and Hi-Fi Rush.

“The re-emergence of Guitar Hero and other things would not be possible without the different types of resources,” said Kotick. “And so, you know, just the endless possibilities for the future that are just incredibly exciting.”

The townhall discussion focused quite a bit on the possibilities for Activision Blizzard thanks to Microsoft’s research into various areas of technology, including AI. Kotick has also expressed that he sees “unlimited potential” for studios under Activision.

“A big part of what I’ve seen in Microsoft is research. And they do development in areas that are extraordinary,” said Kotick. “And so being able to tap into their AI and machine learning capability, the data analytics, new ways of thinking about graphics — I just see unlimited potential for what we do. If you look at the new technologies that are on the horizon, we’re going to be able to do things that we’ve never done before with AI and machine learning.”

Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard has been making quite the rounds throughout the year, with legal negotiations with several regulatory bodies taking place all over the world. The acquisition is set to be finalized later this week.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has previously said that Microsoft has long-term plans with Activision Blizzard, and that newly appointed studios will be allowed to work on a variety of franchises, as opposed to their current situation, where they’ve all been pulled in to feed the Call of Duty machine. It’s not just the Microsoft side that’s thinking about the potential impact of this deal though.

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick – who himself is at the center of many questions where this acquisition is concerned – recently spoke about the Xbox deal in an interview with VentureBeat, and talked about some franchises in particular that could really benefit from being under Microsoft ownership, where they could be able to succeed in ways they haven’t done in recent years- such as Guitar Hero and Skylanders.

“You look at all the opportunities that we get with a company like Microsoft,” Kotick said. “I’ll give you one great example. Phil and I started riffing on things for the future. I’ll give you three that are really compelling. I wanted to make a new Guitar Hero for a while, but I don’t want to add teams to do manufacturing and supply chain and QA for manufacturing. And the chip shortages are enormous.

“We didn’t really have the ability to do that. I had a really cool vision for what the next Guitar Hero would be, and realized we don’t have the resources to do that. And Skylanders too. One of the great disappointments of my career is that other people came in and they came out with crappy alternatives. And they dumped all of these crappy alternatives in the market, and basically destroyed the market for what was a really cool future opportunity. If you look at Skylanders, with its hardware and manufacturing and supply chain, there are the same kinds of things that we can’t do but Microsoft can.”

Xbox’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard isn’t going to be finalized yet until well into 2023, so there’s probably quite some time before any plans are put into place, and even longer before they materialize. Of course, there’s plenty of other questions that need answering as well- like how Microsoft will handle the exclusivity of future Activision Blizzard releases, especially where Call of Duty and PlayStation are concerned.

Guitar Hero

Guitar Hero was the first word in rhythm-based games when it first rolled around. Though mass appeal helped it to achieve great success, actually trying to get good at the game was a task. Mastering the basic controls? No problem. Trying to advance up the ladder and surpass some of the tougher songs, especially Through the Fire and The Flames? It’s definitely not for everyone. Regardless, Guitar Hero was a fun era in gaming.

Though Activision were single handedly responsible for driving the music game market into the ground with the glut of Guitar Hero games that they released into the market, it has been long enough that people who had fun times with the once premier franchise for music games are looking back on their time with it fondly, and wishing for it to stage a comeback. And especially given how Rock Band will be returning later this year, thanks to Harmonix, the time just… seems right for Guitar Hero to have a revival too.

And it may be happening. The video you see above shows a band gearing up to perform, gathering all of its- you guessed it, guitars. The video does not name anything specifically, but we are due for an announcement on the evening of April 14, so stay tuned. Guitar Hero may yet be making a comeback, and leading to a revival of the fierce Rock Band-Guitar Hero rivalry.

Rock Band 4, the recently announced revival of Harmonix’s amazing hit music game series from last generation, will be 1080p and 60 frames per second on both, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, according to a report in UK games industry magazine MCV.

Harmonix product manager Eric Pope said, ‘[Harmonix has] built a brand new engine for Rock Band 4 to make the most of the new hardware. It’s going to look ‘next-gen’ with more realistic lighting, character models, and animation.

“It’ll be 1080p and will run at 60fps,” he said. “I know there’s a vocal group of players that want to hear that. But what to me is more exciting is the online infrastructure of the consoles. It will open a lot [of] opportunities for us to support the game in more reactive, timely ways”.’

Personally, I too am more excited by the ways the game can utilize online, particularly given Pope’s comments.

MVC also went on to state that Rock band 4 is set to release some time in October this year – which is great news – and that Guitar Hero may be mounting a comeback too, which, assuming Activision doesn’t milk to death with poorly spaced releases again, is also great news.

Despite belief that the rhythm action game was dead, Ubisoft will be releasing ‘Rocksmith’ a game following in the footsteps of guitar hero; only with real guitars. For those of you who do not own or play the guitar, fear not! Ubisoft are planning on releasing a bundle which will include a real bonafide guitar. “We will create a new generation of guitar players” says Ubisoft. The game will feature music from The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Nirvana.

Thanks to Kotaku for the info.

Having seen Activision axe the popular guitar hero franchise last week, industry analysts seem confident that a similar fate will not befall the Call of Duty series. A number of analysts have told IndustryGamers that Call of Duty will not suffer a similar demise provided the game’s retain quality control.

Michael Pacther has said that “I don’t think they are comparable at all. GH is a franchise that people buy once, because the peripherals are great. As it saturated the installed base, the only buyers were people who are new console purchasers, and the ‘fad’ appeared to wear off at the same time.”

“CoD, on the other hand, has a vibrant online community that keeps growing. When a new version comes out, the ‘network effect’ kicks in, and many people buy it because their friends have done so. The risk to the franchise is competition, not people tiring of the gameplay… CoD won’t fade unless Activision opens the door to competition by making a bad game.”

David Cole of DFC Intelligence said: “With GH it seemed that it was very likely to be a fad that would be milked until it dried out. It was somewhat the same issue as extreme sports and hunting games. FPS games are a long proven genre and thus don’t seem to have fallen into that fad issue.”

“However, there is a very real danger of milking a franchise and causing quality to decline, which can result in turning consumers off. With COD I think the danger is trying to maintain the quality of the franchise and making sure they don’t release product just to release product.”

Lazard Capital Markets’ Colin Sebastian stated that “I think music games were a fad – just like fitness games were at one point, and maybe dance games are today. But after years of franchise growth, I wouldn’t put Call of Duty in the same category. Could Activision mess it up? Sure, but if they focus on maintaining high game quality, fresh story-lines, and online multiplayer, then I don’t see an obvious reason for the franchise to decline.”

EEDAR’s Jesse Divnich corroborated, saying that “I don’t believe any lessons learned from the music category applies to the Call of Duty franchise. I trust that Activision knows what they are doing with Call of Duty and I remain unconcerned about the franchise’s future.”

Thanks to Industrygamers for the info.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has hinted that the Guitar Hero and DJ Hero franchises could well be revived in the future. Speaking to CNBC the Activision boss said “we had three fantastic products in the marketplace in the [music] genre this year, our two games, DJ Hero 2 and Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, and then Rock Band did a terrific game, but it’s just not a category that’s getting consumers enthusiastic right now, and so I think you need to focus your resources on the things that really gets consumers excited. If something’s not working, we’ll take it off the table, maybe reinvent it in the future, but our focus is really on figuring out what are the things that are going to excite audiences the most.”

When asked about the chance of a series revival, Kotick said “we can never say never, but over the past two years we have seen rapid declines in the music genre, and unfortunately, based on current demand, we simply cannot continue to profitably make these games given the considerable licensing and manufacturing costs.”

Thanks to CNBC for the info.

That’s right after many Guitar Hero titles being released, Activision has driven the franchise into the ground and has now chosen to shutdown the Guitar Hero business.  With Activision trying to get as much out of the franchise as possible releasing as many games a year as they could added with the competition of the Rockband franchise, Guitar Hero which started it all is no more.  Along with the franchise, 7 Studios has also been closed down which was acquired by Activision in 2009 working on the DJ Hero titles.  Lawsuits have been made and it is a big but inevitable mess.  Next will be the Call of Duty franchise if I had to guess with now three different developers working on that franchise.  This has also lead to the discontinued support for any future DLC for Guitar Hero and DJ Hero after February.