Guitar Hero v.s. Rock Band: Battle of the Brands

Circe | March 30, 2008 | News | Playstation 2 Wii

The Guitar Hero series was a hit, it's that simple. Recently Guitar Hero III sold over nine million copies. But a new musical video game has entered the picture: Rock Band. Though it was no where near as successful as Guitar Hero III it still sold roughly 1.5 million for it's first debut. As more Guitar Hero games and Rock Band Wii are released, who knows which brand will really come out on top?

When Guitar Hero 3 launched last year it was an immediate success, selling out at a fairly quick pace throughout the holiday season. Following just behind it was Rock Band, selling very well, but not nearly as quickly as Guitar Hero. So far, all versions of Guitar Hero III have sold about 9.1M copies, versus just roughly 1.5M for Rock Band. Of course, part of the discrepancy lies in the fact that Rock Band launched on two platforms while Guitar Hero 3 launched on four, but that is about to be remedied with Harmonix's recent announcement of Rock Band for Wii. While Rock Band was a more ambitious game and representative of an evolution of the music game, it did seem like Activision may have made the right choice in buying the Guitar Hero publisher (and thus the Guitar Hero brand), but not the developer. With so much brand awareness already built into Guitar Hero, was there any way that Harmonix could possibly top the original creation that it no longer owned the rights to?

News Story attached to:

Guitar Hero [PS2]
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith [Mac, PC, PS2, PS3, Wii, XBOX360]
Guitar Hero II [XBOX360, PS2]
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock [PC, PS3, XBOX360, Wii, PS2]
Guitar Hero: On Tour [DS]
Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s [PS2]
Rock Band [Wii, PS2, XBOX360, PS3]

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Comments

3 thumbs!
Cdemon | March 30, 2008

Rock Band > Guitar Hero, by far. The song selection, downloadable content, music charts, whatever... The only thing Guitar Hero has going for it is the Guitar Hero 2 Xplorer controller.
- 0 thumbs!
  jmac353 | March 30, 2008
  
  What about Waaa Waaa waaa Pantera, Curtis?
1 thumbs!
DragoniteBallZ | March 30, 2008

Rock Band wins!!! Nuff said.
0 thumbs!
Circe | March 30, 2008

I've never played Rock Band actually.
But maybe it really is better.
0 thumbs!
reaver11 | March 31, 2008

There's no debate here - Rock Band is better than GH in every category. Even in its guitar. The feel of the RB guitar is so much easier to use than the short-necked, "huge button" GH controller. RB already has about twice as many songs as GH3 and growing. The only reason why GH3 sold more is because its cheaper and, as mentioned, launched on only 2 platforms. GH is just turning into a cash cow now. What with the new Aerosmith game, that's a sign of "running out of new ideas".