The rumors have been proven true. Activision's failed title Tony Hawk: Ride will be getting a sequel, the company confirmed today. Even in spite of the absolute ripping critics gave it and the fact that Mr. Hawk himself had to resort to being people's friend just to get them to play his game, the publisher believes it can turn opinions around by giving the game more polish.

"It took longer to optimize the hardware, leaving less time to optimize the software," explained Activision publishing boss Mike Griffith.

Fortunately, the company will be scaling back its over-saturated Guitar Hero franchise. The music-game genre took a huge hit in 2009, which obviously prompted the company to pull back on Guitar Hero. Activision produced 25 music-related SKUs in 2009. This year? It's producing just two "Hero" games.

Activision also plans to cut costs by dropping Guitar Hero development for the PlayStation 2.

It seems like just about every band is getting its own Rock Band or Guitar Hero these days, but the latest rumor is that the metal band Megadeth is getting its own game. A recent Q&A on the band's website all but confirms it. "Will Megadeth ever be on a Guitar Hero game?" one curious fan asks.

"I have recently had two very important high-level meetings with the people from Activision and Neversoft, and we are talking about a lot of things, but a Guitar Hero box set is not as attractive to me and the people from Guitar Hero as the new idea that they offered me, as the creative stuff that we are talking about is over-the-moon!" responded frontman Dave Mustaine. "I just hope that someone doesn't stand in the way of this happening. I know that there are a lot of really damaging results from our mothership (WEA) having some legal disputes with YouTube and Guitar Hero to name just a few."

"Over-the-moon" creative stuff? So that means I will finally get to play Gears of War after I play Gears of War?  Awesome.

[via TVGB]

In an effort to make browsing for music game DLC more simple, Microsoft is launching individualized music game stores on Xbox Live later today. The "Music Games Stores" section in the Dashboard will cover all the major rhythm games, such as Guitar Hero, Lips, and Rock Band. Gamers will be able to easily search through the massive library of content, sorting by a number of different methods and even allowing you to preview tracks for each individual game.

The music game genre is a booming market, or should I say was a booming market? The "Hero" and "Rock Band" phenomena has all but passed I think, and yet publishers continue to try to milk it for what its worth. Guitar Hero: Van Halen, DJ Hero, The Beatles: Rock Band, and most recently, Green Day: Rock Band. The reality is, these games just aren't selling like they used to. Why? Besides the over-saturation of the genre, industry analyst Michael Pachter believes these games give us "too much."

"Publishers have probably done themselves a disservice by giving us way too much value for our money with each of these games," he said. "You just get way too much content. The installed base has a lot of music, and they don't really need a lot more. It's sort of like buying more books when you have a stack of books left to read. You just don't."

What Pachter says is logical, but what explains the selling of DLC for music games? Even in spite of the genre's decline, DLC sales are on the rise for games like Rock Band and the slew of Guitar Hero titles. If there really is" too much content," as Pachter says, then why are people buying tracks?

Update: It was initially reported that DJ Hero sold 123,000 units in November. This figure was incorrectly reported. The actual sales were 211,000 units.

We reported yesterday that Activision's Tony Hawk: Ride didn't fare too well in sales last month. Activision has another game that didn't do so hot in sales, and it's another big peripheral game, DJ Hero. No matter how they try to spin it, the game has not been seeing the success the company would like it to enjoy. NPD reports that the game sold 123,000 211,000 units last month. The $120 price tag is an obvious deterrent to consumers, as was the case for Tony Hawk: Ride.

What differentiates DJ Hero from Ride, however, is that it's actually a pretty solid game. While Tony Hawk has a Metacritic score of 48, DJ Hero's is 86, a particularly high score for a big-peripheral rhythm game.

NPD has pointed out that sales for games in the music genre are steadily trending downward, even with The Beatles: Rock Band recently breaking one million copies sold. The rhythm game craze has passed, and so sales for games such as DJ Hero just aren't experiencing the same success they saw with Rock Band and Guitar Hero. The genre is starting to wear thin.

During an earnings Q&A last Thursday, Activision briefly brought up their 2010 schedule and it included new Call of Duty, Spider Man and Guitar Hero games.  More Guitar Hero isn't all that surprising (or perhaps its Drum Hero, a trademark recently filed by Activision), but a new Call of Duty game seems interesting, especially with rumors that it's set during the Vietnam War.  Lets hope the new Spider Man game doesn't suffer the same fate as the previous games have, though.  There just hasn't been a great Spider Man game since Spider Man 2 for the last generation of consoles.

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