Battle of the Bands: Guitar Hero Rocks 2008

Whether you love Guitar Hero: World Tour or hate it, one thing is for certain: This game is a colossus. The proof of that is in the NPD Group sales numbers for 2008, where total sales of Activision’s popular rock franchise managed to handily beat EA’s Rock Band 2 by two-to-one. For the full year, Rock Band 2 sold a respectable 1.7 million units on the PS3 and Xbox 360, while Guitar Hero: World Tour sold 3.1 million units.

So how did the first game in the series to feature additional instruments and the ability to sing out loud badly beat the popular Rock Band 2? The first factor should be the most obvious: brand name recognition. Guitar Hero is a better known franchise in my opinion, though Rock Band managed to gain favor amongst the hardcore and critics, the game is just not as well known as Activision’s games.

The other key factor is how the games were released. EA decided to stagger its release, giving Xbox 360 an exclusive launch window. The PS3 version was released later in the year and the Wii version didn’t release in January. Perhaps looking at the life to date numbers will give Rock Band 2 a boost, but it’s hard to tell because of the last factor: Activision released the game on the PlayStation 2. It probably didn’t help that On Tour shipped before Rock Band 2 or that it hit stores shelves for all supported platforms on the same day.

Unfortunately it doesn’t look like these games will go head-to-head this year. Rock Band 3 is not coming in 2009, with EA instead focusing on a Beatles themed release and we have not heard yet when the next Guitar Hero game will ship.