And now I get to see all the journalist folks who called for GH's death when WoR was announced be deeply saddened by folks being out of work. Derp.

To be fair, it's not the developers faults. Activision destroyed this franchise. Just drove it straight into the ground.

You can want a shitty franchise to die and still feel bad for the actual human beings who get affected by layoffs. These companies could easily work on other games, but I guess it's easier for the huge game publishers to just shut the doors and call it a day.

I guess I'm too cynical to see it going any other way if they decided to cut down or bail on GH. (And I'd be absolutely floored if the franchise is actually "DONE" done.) Guess we'll see.

The king is dead! Long live the king!

Of course..

In shutting down these devs, Activision also announced they just opened a new one!

http://twitter.com/geoffkeighley
Yay for map packs!

So now Activision is solely making CoD and WoW games, eh? Well, I guess they might introduce some original IP, right?

Right?

Probably not. Ever again.

Then again they just announced Family Guy and Wipeout licensed games...

So...they have learned nothing from their endless cycle of burning out franchises. Those amazing AAA franchises that we know and love today originally started as...original IPs. I know it's shocking, Activision, but it's true.

I, for one, am thrilled that a company is finally thinking of the consumers and only giving us AAA titles.

Sounds like even more now they are turning into the EA of the past. Let's see how long they last doing this before they realize the err of their ways. Of course with the money train that is Blizzard, they might not ever need to worry about this. I can see Call of Duty dropping in popularity in the next few years, but Blizzard is an unstoppable force.

All it takes is one new hotness.

I keep waiting for this same kind of news about Rock Band. I'm not debating the merits of either game (prefer Rock Band), but with Harmonix being dumped and Guitar Hero being "discontinued," I wonder if we'll ever see a Rock Band 4 (or even DLC past what's already been locked in)?

I doubt that we'll see any more RB disc releases, except for maybe those cheap-to-make track packs. But...do we really need more disc-based games? Just keep making good DLC, and I'm set for the foreseeable future.

Which EA is banking on...

The RB3 engine and shell does need some tweaking, but it's nothing a digital title couldn't do. Probably more than patches can accomplish. All the meat is in the DLC anyway.

I disagree. I'd like to see Rock Band 4 that introduces a true band management component, where you can choose where to schedule shows, when to release records (and what to title them), etc.

Also, I'm glad Guitar Hero is dead. Warriors of Rock was unplayable.

To each their own. I don't care about band management. I just want to play songs.

Really? I found it to be the same as every other music game where you pushed the buttons in the order they were on screen and it made it seem like you were playing along with the song.

I was ready to throw my copy out the window. And I liked Guitar Hero 5.

There have been a bunch of new IP's though. Blur, Prototype, Singularity to name a few.

True, but they almost never stick with a new IP long enough for it to establish itself. Blur's dead along with Bizarre Creations, and I'm guessing that Singularity won't be getting a sequel. Prototype is the exception that proves the rule.

I'd really like to see a bigger RPG aspect to Rock Band. I think that would be a lot of fun.

Would that make it more or less "niche"?