Guitar Hero vs Rock Band

The dust is finally starting to settle now that Rock Band and Guitar Hero have had two holiday seasons to go head to head. Despite my love for Harmonix's work and Rock Band, the sales numbers speak for themselves. According to vgchartz.com, as of February 2009, the Guitar Hero games have sold 23 million units compared to Rock Band's 8 million units. That's a 3-to-1 trouncing. (The Guitar Hero numbers include GH III, GH: World Tour, and GH: Aerosmith. The Rock Band numbers include Rock Band 1 and 2, RB: AC/DC, and the RB Track Packs.)

Now the Rock Band fans would say, hey, Rock Band is a more polished game, we're probably over 30 million song downloads, and there's new songs every week! All of these are true, yet despite the polish and the expansive content library, Rock Band has not sold nearly as well as Guitar Hero. Roughly speaking, 30 million downloaded songs is $60 million in revenues, and that's plenty for MTV/Viacom to be happy about (they own Harmonix). Yet think about what these revenues could have been if more units of Rock Band had been sold. Let's do some quick math. Combined, about 30 million "band" games were sold since holiday 2007. If Rock Band sold twice as many units as they did (effectively splitting the market with Guitar Hero), it's quite feasible that they would have sold twice as many downloadable songs - that's 30 million more songs and another $60 million in revenues. That's a nice bump to MTV's earnings. (Although Sony and Microsoft take a cut of downloads on to their consoles)

But enough with hypotheticals, let's take a hard look at why this came to pass. If I had to put my finger on one thing, it would be marketing. I believe Activision won the marketing battle against MTV. Celebrity-laden commercials, Guitar Hero releases throughout the year to keep the brand fresh, and a constant stream of PR announcements kept GH on top. On the other hand, I've only seen two different ads for Rock Band 1 and 2 combined. Two ads!!! Where's the news about the superior metacritic ratings? Where are the announcements about the WEEKLY stream of killer songs? What about getting one or two rockstars to help promote a game about Rock and Roll? I really just don't know. And I think it's a shame, because the Rock Band games are good stuff, and the Harmonix folks have rock 'n' roll in their blood.

It's not all bad marketing news though. EA, MTV's distribution partner, did a pretty good job in filling up Best Buys and Gamestops around the country with Rock Band gear. I have to say that the space given to Rock Band versus Guitar Hero was pretty even, and that is an accomplishment for an admittedly bulky product in a tightly-controlled retail space.

But overall, I think the message is clear: in a hyper-competitive market such as games, the company that gets the clear, consistent (yet fresh) message to the consumer, is the company that wins.