Activision: Guitar Hero Stealing Rock Band Retail Market Share in US, Europe

During a conference call for investors, Activision announced that its Guitar Hero franchise of rhythm games was making significant gains on EA and Harmonix' Rock Band at retail.

CEO Bobby Kotick said of Rock Band: "We've seen a rather precipitous falloff of that franchise."

"We ended the quarter with a 55% share of all rhythm and music-based games in North America and Europe, up 10 full points from the prior year as we took share from Rock Band in both North America and Europe," added Activision publishing boss Mike Griffith.

"In the US and Europe, the Guitar Hero franchise was the number one best-selling third-party franchise overall [this quarter]," he said.

Griffith noted that Guitar Hero is outselling Rock Band at a ratio of ten-to-one in Europe.

Harmonix has already announced that the company would not be releasing a Rock Band sequel in 2009, and is instead looking to focus on sales of track downloads.