Guitar Hero - Reception and Sales

Reception and Sales

Games in the Guitar Hero series have been generally well received by critics. The initial games were highly praised by reviewers. Neversoft's first entry to the series, Guitar Hero III, was considered to be too difficult, with many difficult songs presenting players with "walls of notes"; the developers later acknowledged this. Subsequent efforts in Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Guitar Hero World Tour were seen to have some improvements, with Guitar Hero: Metallica considered to be a well-polished title and, at that time, the best Guitar Hero title Neversoft has produced. Guitar Hero 5's improvements toward social gameplay were complemented by reviewers and considered a further improvement upon the series. Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "An addictive videogame provides the illusion of musical mastery for even the least gifted:. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Tap, tap, tap."

Upon release, the first game was seen as an unexpected hit, earning over US$45 million with about 1.5 million copies sold. Guitar Hero II was significantly more financially successful, with over 1.3 million copies sold and sales over US$200 million. Guitar Hero III, according to Activision, was the first single video game to sell more than US$1 billion at retail, with nearly 3.5 million copies sold during the first seven months of 2008. World Tour continued the series' high sales records with 3.4 million units sold in the United States during 2008. More than 60 million downloadable tracks have been purchased across the series as of February 2010. Both Guitar Hero III and World Tour were listed on a March 2011 list from the NPD Group of top grossing games in unadjusted sales in the United States since 1995; Guitar Hero III tops the list with total sales of $830.9 million.

Overall, the Guitar Hero series has sold more than 25 million units worldwide, earning US$2 billion at retail. Activision claimed the series to be the 3rd largest game franchise in 2009 after the Mario and Madden NFL franchises.