No Guitar Hero in 2011, True Crime Cancelled

By Michelle Balsan,
Activision Blizzard's December Quarter and 2010 Financial Results did not paint a pretty picture for its long running music game franchise, Guitar Hero.

According to the report, "due to continued declines in the music genre, the company will disband Activision Publishing's Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011". This isn't the only time the decline in the music game industry has affected a game publisher lately. Viacom recently sold Harmonix, the developers of Rock Band, before shuttering their MTV Games division earlier this month.

Another game to fall victim to Activision's cuts is True Crime: Hong Kong. Activision decided to pass on the titles "to focus on the greatest opportunities that the company currently has to create the world's best interactive entertainment experiences".

In further bad news from the Activision camp, it was reported by Eurogamer today that Freestyle Games, developer of the DJ Hero franchise, was hit with 'severe layoffs'. Further, a tweet from Developer Manveer Heir states that Vicarious Visions, which was responsible for various Guitar Hero ports for the Wii, has also been impacted by layoffs.

It wasn't all doom and gloom for the publisher, however, as both Call of Duty: Black Ops and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm preformed very well.

No word was given as to whether or not this will affect DLC for either franchise. While layoffs have occurred at Freestyle Games, it was not made clear how that might impact anything they might have in development at this time.
Michelle Balsan
Written by Michelle Balsan
Michelle is the Assistant Manager of the Newshounds at TrueAchievements and has been a member of staff since 2010. When not contributing to gaming websites, she makes her living as a mild-mannered librarian. She can be compelled to play just about anything if there's a co-op component, and has been playing games with friends and siblings since the Atari 2600. As it's reportedly healthy to have hobbies outside of gaming, she also roots for some of the most difficult sporting franchises to root for, the New York Mets and New York Jets, but offsets that by rooting for the New Jersey Devils. She's also seen pretty much none of the movies you have, but she's working on that.
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