In his latest NPD preview report, Esteemed EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich declared Guitar Hero may be "reaching its peak" and predicted unit sales of Guitar Hero: World Tour will be down 50 percent series-over-series in November. Yikes!
"This is coming off the October month where series-over-series units declined by more than 60%," Divnich said. "We do believe that supply issues on the complete band kit were a problem, but our sources at VideoGamePriceCharts.com indicate that reseller prices on ebay.com are beginning to dip below retail MSRP, which is a strong indication that demand and supply are currently in equilibrium. Even if supply was not an issue, series-over-series unit sales would have still been down over 40%.
"To further add to the problem, a lot of retailers had black Friday deals on Guitar Hero III to deplete excess inventory, which hindered and cannibalized sales for Guitar Hero: World Tour. It is pretty clear that the series has already reached its peak among the mass-market audience. Of course, we are not suggesting that the Guitar Hero (or Rock Band) franchise will be disappearing anytime soon. In fact, we expect Guitar Hero and Rock Band releases for the next 10 years as they will always have a large and loyal market base, just as DDR is still today a very profitable franchise for Konami, even though that series reached its peak a long time ago."
Divnich also noted software sales for November were up three percent to $1.34 billion, said that Call of Duty: World at War was "up, slightly, series-over-series at 2.1 million units for the month," and predicted Gears of War 2 will be the best selling SKU this holiday season. Overall though, World at War series-over-series sales are expected to go down.
Damn. So do you think GHWT has “reached its peak”?
Oh…and check out Playboy playmate Grace Kim reviewing Guitar Hero: World Tour below…it’s HOT!!!
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