(2005 - 2011)
Guitar Hero, we hardly knew ye.
It doesn't seem all that long ago that Guitar Hero was a cultural phenomenon. Now, as has been confirmed by Activision themselves, the franchise is no more. As Kotaku points out, sales of the series have been on the decline for a while now, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the series was axed.
From where I'm sitting, there's a couple of different reasons why the series died. First, Activision more or less flooded the market with, essentially, the same game over and over. In classic Activision form, they took a popular franchise and tried to squeeze every last dollar out of it by cranking out games as fast as they could. Second, I think people got tired of having to buy and store those plastic instruments. Lastly, perhaps the entire genre was merely a fad that has finally passed. It's easy to see how people could become disenchanted with the game when you consider my previous two points.
So fare thee well, Guitar Hero, it was fun while it lasted.
