Activision Blizzard officially buries amateur rocker franchise...

In a somewhat surprising move, Activision Blizzard Publishing announced via press release on Wednesday that there will be no further Guitar Hero titles and that the company will cease publishing any and all copies of the various installments of said franchise effective this year.

The statement said, in part, that "due to continued declines in the music genre", Activision would be disbanding their Guitar Hero "business unit" in order to turn its focus on more profitable titles. Interestingly, this news comes on the heels of another Activision press release that revealed that 2010 was the company's most profitable in history, to the "tune" of a $1.4 billion profit.

Conceived and created by RedOctane and Harmonix in 2005, Guitar Hero was widely credited with reviving interest in the rock and roll genre among teens and twenty-somethings, a demographic increasingly attuned to rap, hip-hop, and country music's recent popular rebirth. This revival led to Guitar Hero and its competitor, Rock Band, becoming two of the most popular and sought-after console video games in the past several years. Concurrently, those artists featured on Guitar Hero often experienced large gains in album sales, most prominently Aerosmith, Van Halen, and Metallica. Unfortunately, the public's notoriously-short attention span and the associated decline in sales appears to have been more than Activision was willing to tolerate.

No news has been forthcoming from Rock Band distributor Electronic Arts regarding the future of its title, which now appears to have a monopoly of sorts in the 'amateur rock' genre. Fans of this particular niche will undoubtedly hope that future projects, in some shape or form, continue for years to come. Either way, perhaps the best way to pay tribute to the rise and fall of amateur rock's prominence is to fire up the console, strap on the guitar, and strum a few bars of an old classic; perhaps 'Paint it Black' by the Rolling Stones... or in this case, 'Paint it Red, Green, Yellow, Green, Blue, Green, Orange, Green, Blue, Green, Yellow, Green, Red, Green"...

CNN

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