thanks for all the replies i'm gonna try to fix it tomorrow.. glad that its fixable, i would have never figured it out on my own.

Holy Shit! How did we miss this? This is the fallout when you oversaturate the market and turn out turds like GH Van Halen:

RedOctane closed by Activision?
By Brendan Sinclair, GameSpotPosted Feb 12, 2010 11:52 am PT
Original Guitar Hero shop named as the latest casualty in publisher's sweeping cuts; Van Halen developer also shuttered.

Source: A report on Kotaku says Activision has closed down Mountain View, California-based RedOctane and fellow Bay Area shop Underground Development. The moves serve as a gruesome capper to a day that saw Activision cull staffers at Radical and Neversoft and shutter Luxoflux.

What we heard: It has been a busy week for Activision. The publisher announced its year-end financial results Wednesday, showing an annual $113 million profit--but a quarterly loss of $286 million. The latter shortcoming was blamed on a write-down of its ryhthm-game assets, which were devalued by the ongoing music-game glut. The company's lineup of Guitar Hero games suffered significantly, with sell-through down 35 percent from 2008.


That prompted Activision to take action, dramatically scaling back its slate of Guitar Hero SKUs (stock-keeping units; a game with two different bundles on three platforms each would be six SKUs). In 2009, Activision bombarded retailers with 25 different Guitar Hero SKUs, from the PlayStation 2 edition of Guitar Hero: Van Halen to the Wii version of Guitar Hero: Metallica. For 2010, Activision is planning just two major music games--a Guitar Hero game and DJ Hero 2--with fewer than 10 SKUs.

If Activision is making fewer games, that means it needs fewer development teams, something confirmed yesterday by the publisher's layoffs across the company. Radical Entertainment (Prototype) and Neversoft (primary Guitar Hero developer since 2007) endured some layoffs, while Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen studio Luxoflux was shuttered entirely.

That RedOctane would be included in the cuts is not entirely surprising. That it would be shuttered entirely is. Kotaku reports that RedOctane "has been completely shut down," with some key employees retained to "report straight to Activision" and 30 to 40 others laid off. The blog also says Underground Development, which worked on Guitar Hero: Van Halen, has been shuttered.

A source within the company confirmed for GameSpot that Activision is planning to close RedOctane down within two months and that the publisher is discarding the brand name entirely. If even the outfit that published the original Guitar Hero and was acquired by Activision for $100 million is expendable, the publisher would have little reason to flinch in closing a shop that worked on exactly the sort of spin-off project that won't be made this year.

The official story: "As part of our overall strategy to release fewer Guitar Hero SKUs in 2010, we are closing the Underground studio and relocating Guitar Hero headquarters to Santa Monica under the leadership of [Guitar Hero business unit COO] David Haddad." - An Activision representative.

Bogus or not bogus?: Unfortunately not bogus.

Anyone remember when EA was the bad guy and Activision was the company we all rooted for?

No. No I do not.

Anyway, Activision has no one to blame but themselves. Taking a strong property with a rock-solid brand name and driving it into the ground with endless spinoffs and sequels ad nauseum. It wasn't like people weren't telling them STOP IT, YOU'RE DILUTING AND DESTROYING THE FRANCHISE... In fact, pretty much everyone was saying that.

What did they put out last year? Guitar Hero: Metallica, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, Guitar Hero 6, Band Hero, Guitar Hero: Van Halen... five major releases for a single franchise in less than 12 months. Not to mention the "portable" games and exploting the "Hero" name for DJ HERO, an innovative and kinda fun game that drowned in the ensuing music game backlash.

Of course Red Octane got shuttered. Everyone already has a ton of fake plastic instruments. People aren't going to buy new guitar and drum peripherals every time a new game comes out... let alone FIVE IN A SINGLE YEAR.

Morons...

I remember when Atari was the bad guy and Activision was the good guy. But this was the early 80s.

If only they had closed down Neversoft instead. Maybe now the Red Octane guys can go work for EA and improve the Rock Band instruments.

Red Octane was only shut down in name. They kept all of the key hardware people and moved them to the Guitar Hero HQ.

Oh, so who cares?

I'm guessing the

As much as I hate what Neversoft did to the GH series, it always sucks to see people lose their jobs.

Oops. Didn't notice that part.

Well a lot of Neversoft was laid off as well, per the rumors out there.

BLACK SABBATH 'Guitar Hero' DLC Delayed - Feb. 18, 2010

Much disappointment lately on the GH front, sigh.

Bobby Kotick opens his mouth again, stupid stuff spills out.

http://rockbandaide.com/good-thing-h...led-developer/

Well, to be fair, that was probably a valid view at the time. I mean, GH existed - how hard could it be to screw up?

The only difference is Harmonix had the passion and the respect to put the music first. The gameplay and the fun followed.

Except that Amplitude was an awesome game, and Harmonix created the phenomenal GH1/GH2. Not even close to valid. RO was just looking for a new way to sell peripherals and got extremely lucky. They could have ended up with Rock Revolution and not known the difference.

You're confusing quality with quantity, porieux. Let me repost his long quote, but with the important bits bolded:

That fits in exactly with what you just said.

This is what I was talking about. GH was already a hit, how hard could it be to screw up? And here I would just repeat what I said about HMX respecting the music and having passion and yadda yadda yadda.

I'm not confusing anything, Amplitude was commercially viable or it wouldn't have been released. Regardless, the 'until Guitar Hero' qualifier is asinine since that was their most recent work and Harmonix were 100% the reason it was so successful.

To look at GH1/GH2 and not be able to see it as more than just 'a good piece of software' shows a level of ignorance of the game industry that is just staggering for a CEO of one of the major publishers, though sadly, not at all surprising.

I don't really see anything wrong with the reasoning. I can easily see how he's not the only one that felt it was the basic concept of the game that was appealing, not necessarily anything special from the developer itself. At it's roots, it's just another rhythm game to which something like DDR was already a success with.

I guess I don't understand Kotick's logic in the slightest. He's saying "Well, Harmonix made Guitar Hero 1/2 and sold well, but all they've done in the past is less successful music games, so let's give GH to the guys who make Tony Hawk titles and they'll hit a home run."

Either he's a total idiot or he can't put a thought together, I can't tell which.

Hello, Guitar Hero thread

Here's some news that's actually worth getting excited about. Pretty huge songs for the month of April, including the previously-delayed Sabbath stuff.

Actually, what I was pretty stoked about was Freebird, but then it occurred to me that that is probably already part of the Smash Hits export. Or did they inexplicably leave that off? If it is on SH, I guess that really makes the Skynyrd pack take a huge hit in necessity. Still jealous because I have the other 2 in Rock Band and desperately want Freebird

Is anyone still playing Guitar Hero? That's not a knock, I'm legitimately curious.