Rock Guitar Band Hero: No Versus In These Verses

Maybe it’s because this is a presidential election year. Maybe it’s because this is turning out to be a bit of a slow news year. But we here at GamerDNA have been perusing the data, and with all due respect to MTV’s Multiplayer blog and G4 and other gaming news sources, we’re not seeing any need for players to choose between the top titles in the music game category.

You might have seen news articles talking about a brewing showdown for the upcoming sequels to the raw awesomeness that are the Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises. Conventional wisdom stated that the required accessories for these games were so expensive that consumers could only choose one set of toys. Early attempts at making you choose one (thaaaanks, Activision, really) didn’t pan out as planned, and the buzz is that the titles are going to compete on their merits.

And what a competition it’s being painted out to be. From the rhetoric you’d think the fate of the free world would be decided by who rocks the hardest. (Not everyone is taking a side – Warner music, for one, is declaring a plague on both houses for not ponying up enough of the heaps of money these games rake in to get the music. Hey, Bronfman, no offense, but they paid the price you quoted. Not their fault that they turned around and made zillions more than you expected. If the amount being paid to you is “too small,” then blame the party that set the price in the first place. If you get your way on this one, I’m going to go back and ask for a fat check from the guy to whom I sold my house in the middle of this real estate crash.)

But let’s look at the numbers:

First of all, music games as a genre are definitely a major player on the console scene. Remember last week’s pie chart?

MUsic games are the second largest wedge behind FPS, but ahead of such console mainstays as fighters and action/adventure titles. Not bad for a niche that didn’t hit its stride until late 2005 with the release of the first Guitar Hero.

There’s no easy way to determine who is “winning” the race for the hearts and minds of music gamers at this time. In terms of the GamerDNA community in the past month, Rock Band is the third most popular console game, and Guitar Hero III is in seventh place. The official Xbox Live charts put Guitar Hero III in fifth, and Rock Band in sixth. The official charts simply count the number of users playing a particular title – GamerDNA uses that metric and takes into account the frequency of play. Guitar Hero has the edge in the raw number of people playing the title, but Rock Band is played more often by its users.

But talking about Guitar Hero III and Rock Band players as though they were separate populations is misleading. They are not. In fact, a little more than half of the population of players that told us they own one of the titles also owns the other. And a staggering 31% either play or have played all three of the big titles: GH2, GH3, and RB.

So the idea that players are choosing one flavor of music title is simply wrong. And now that it looks like the major players in the market are going to play nice and allow their respective instruments to be used across the genre, there’s no reason that everyone can’t see their bottom line benefit from… hitting all the right notes.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

The point is that painting the different franchises as forcing a choice for consumers is a creation of the media. It’s like saying that if you’re a Democrat, you can’t respect John McCain’s military service, or if you’re a Republican, you can’t be inspired by Obama’s oratory. Real life voters aren’t usually quite so rigidly defined, and unlike the exercise of political franchise, there’s no reason music fans can’t buy both GH4 and RB2.