At the publisher's Analyst Day, Activision Blizzard talked a bit about the influence of Guitar Hero on the music industry and the company's big plans for the popular franchise moving forward. According to Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith, by 2010 the company intends to actually triple the amount of Guitar Hero titles and content it produces – meaning both retail releases and downloadable content.
In order to achieve this growth for the all-important Guitar Hero franchise, Activision will apparently look to more developers and hardware suppliers. The most recent example of this came last week when Activision acquired music specialist and B-Boy developer FreeStyleGames, which is already working on downloadable content for Guitar Hero.
Downloadable songs have been selling well in both Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but during the Analyst Day, Universal Music President and COO Zach Horowitz noted that songs that are included in the Guitar Hero franchise have seen a significant lift in real-world sales of the music too. In fact, Horowitz said that on average songs included in Guitar Hero have seen sales grow between 200 and 300 percent. Incredibly, Weezer's "My Name is Jonas" (featured in Guitar Hero III) was cited as experiencing a real-world sales increase of 1,000 percent in the weeks after the game hit the market.
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