Guitar Hero Comeback Tour? Activision Proposes Return of the Franchise to Xbox
It’s barely been 48 hours since Microsoft announced their acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and a comeback tour for Guitar Hero may already be on the table.
According to a new interview between Bobby Kotick and VentureBeat, the current Activision Blizzard CEO has already proposed the return of Guitar Hero and other franchises to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer.
Phil and I started riffing on things for the future. I’ll give you three that are really compelling. I wanted to make a new Guitar Hero for a while, but I don’t want to add teams to do manufacturing and supply chain and QA for manufacturing. And the chip shortages are enormous. We didn’t really have the ability to do that. I had a really cool vision for what the next Guitar Hero would be, and realized we don’t have the resources to do that.
Bobby Kotick interview: Why Activision Blizzard did the deal with Microsoft – VentureBeat
Kotick also went on to say that one of the “great disappointments” of his career is that other developers flooded the market with “crappy alternatives” to Activision’s Skylanders franchise of toys-to-life games. This trend eventually soured and destroyed the market for everyone, but Kotick is still optimistic that it could see a big comeback as well. “If you look at Skylanders, with its hardware and manufacturing and supply chain, there are the same kinds of things that we can’t do but Microsoft can.” he said.
If you ask me (and you basically are if you clicked on this blog), I absolutely love this idea. Even Skylanders, which honestly was a VERY solid platform title (and apparently sold insanely well for Activision boasting $3 billion in sales and more than 300 million toys sold) should get a reboot as well.
Nostalgia is a powerful tool, and with the rest of the gaming market being flooded by tactical shooters, FPS games, and battle royales – a new casual option for fans, streamers, and newcomers alike would absolutely sell like crazy. All I ask is that if Microsoft uses the name “Guitar Hero Comeback Tour” that I get a lil lovin’.
