Guitar Hero Shut Down... Not Inevitable?

One of the biggest categories of game software over the past few years was music software... until it collapsed. There was an amazing amount of software and hardware sold to go with the Guitar Hero craze. It helped prop up industry sales and mask the shift of revenues to mobile and social gaming. Until it suddenly died... and perhaps it wasn't of natural causes.

This Crunchgear article makes the point that Guitar Hero was a cow that was milked to death by too-frequent new releases, and essentially getting customers to pay for new tracks at premium prices. Eventually the craze ended, or people woke up to the expense, and then Activision decides it's past hope and kills it completely.

Seems to me that with proper management such a franchise could generate revenues for a long time, if you don't abuse the customers. Shows what an obsession with quarterly profits can do, doesn't it? Activision has been busy killing franchises lately (Tony Hawk bit the dust, too), and it's not clear what's going to replace them any time soon. I suppose Blizzard's new releases over the next year will of course be hits. Activision better hope that the new Bungie title is a worthy successor to Halo.