Activision announced today that it is disbanding its Guitar Hero unit, which signals at least a temporary end to the once lucrative and later overly abundant franchise. Downloadable tracks for the latest game in the series, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, will continue with content already in the pipeline but it is not expected to continue beyond February.
Unlike EA (which sold rival studio Harmonix back as an indie game developer for a song in December), Activision is keeping the franchise rights which might mean it will relaunch it if there's a resurgence in music game interest down the road. It's not clear yet her this will affect the DJ Hero series, but there will be no further Guitar Hero games in 2011 - possibly never.
Meanwhile, the game True Crime: Hong Kong has simply been canceled. Activision cited quality issues, saying it just wasn't good enough to continue investing in it. Activision also revealed that it is going to layoff approximately 500 people worldwide...
UPDATE: DJ Hero 2 DLC is apparently cancelled after February as well, signaling at least a temporary end to this product line. And skateboarding titles (such as the once venerated Tony Hawk series) are also on ice.
Not too sad about guitar hero, but I was kinda looking forward to true crime: hong kong. Too bad. Also the Tony Hawk series being on ice makes me sad, as I used to absolutely love the first ones in the series (the music selection was amazing haha).