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Music DLC Still Selling Despite Genre’s Downturn

by Tyler Treat Dec 14, 2009 1:09 PM CST
filed under dlc, industry, news, ps3, wii, xbox 360

djhero

Music and rhythm game sales have been falling pretty drastically as of late. It seems as though the "Guitar Hero" craze has all but passed, but strangely, there's still a market for music game DLC. Microsoft's David Dennis told GamesIndustry.biz that sales of songs and track packs on Xbox Live were still going strong despite last month's decline in hardware and software sales for the genre.

"We still see a lot of activity on Live for those games, people are still buying a lot of song packs for them," he said. "And that's an ongoing revenue stream that third parties can do, and leverage games like that to keep the experience fresh. It's a steady stream, and a sort of steady adoption."

Dennis believes that the games are able to hook players, which increases their need to download new tracks and content.

"I know that people are very passionate about the music games and play them over and over and over again, they keep coming back and downloading more and more content," added Dennis. It's an investment in a music library, just as you would for your CD library. People are passionate about building out their music game library, it's something that they cherish and play with their friends over again."

DJ Hero Only Sold 123K Units in November, Rhythm Genre in Trouble [Updated]

by Tyler Treat Dec 11, 2009 1:34 PM CST
filed under industry, news, ps3, wii, xbox 360

djhero

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.

Everyview: DJ Hero

feature

by Tyler Treat Oct 27, 2009 9:41 PM CST
filed under everyview, features, ps3, wii, xbox 360

djhero

Here's a round up of the scores for Activision's new music game DJ Hero. Hint: get your wallet.

(more...)





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