When a music video game franchise is so successful it rakes in $1 billion in revenue, it’s no surprise big bands like Aerosmith take notice. The band announced it’s coming to Guitar Hero in June, and the revenue is there to show why.
Digital Journal — Fans of Aerosmith will be overjoyed with sweet emotion to find out the band has inked a deal with Activision to come to the Guitar Hero franchise. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith will be the first music-based game to feature one band.
Slated for release in June, Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer will be converted into virtual characters and distributed to the top-selling video game of 2007.
It’s also no surprise why Aerosmith would be interested in such a venture: The Guitar Hero video game franchise has sold more than $1 billion in North American retail sales. That is billion, not million.
In Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, gamers will be able to play as Perry (guitar), Whitford (guitar) and Hamilton (bass) as they pick at the fretboard alongside singer Tyler and drummer Kramer.
“Having a game built around Aerosmith has been a huge honor and really a great experience for us,” said Joe Perry in a news release. “We’ve put a lot of ideas into the game so that fans can have fun interacting with our music, getting inside our body of work and learning about the band’s history.”
A scene from the upcoming game Guitar Hero: Aerosmith
So, what’s in it for Aerosmith, you ask? Well, one need look no further than the band DragonForce (who play the song “Through the Fire and Flames” in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock) to understand why Aerosmith would even consider a video game venture: The band says having a song in the game has led to a surge in real-world CD sales. DragonForce saw its digital sales climb from 2,000 weekly downloads to 37,825 during the last week of December 2007. The only song that beat it was Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” (also a Guitar Hero III song) that sold 38,330.
For DragonForce, their album Inhuman Rampage has also been on Billboard magazine’s “Top Heatseekers” chart a whopping four times and album sales climbed to 230,000 (155,000 more albums sold than in the U.K. where the band calls home).
We’ve been tracking the Guitar Hero phenomenon of boosting real-world sales since Nov. 2007 (see our coverage), and more evidence is piling up. According to Nielsen SoundScan data, 11 out of 12 Guitar Hero II songs also saw sales climb in ’07:
• Cheap Trick’s Surrender went from 58,000 digital sales in 2006 to 161,000 in 2007.
• Kiss’ Strutter sales went from 11,000 to 63,000.
• The Pretenders’ Tattooed Love Boys rose from 5,000 to 16,000.
• Only Danzig’s Mother showed a drop, from 28,000 to 16,000.
A look at the numbers shows Aerosmith is no fool when it comes to finding new channels of revenue.
On the topic of Guitar Hero, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler said, “Any band that can go from ‘Don’t Want to Miss A Thing’ (Aerosmith’s #1 smash hit) to the ass-kicking ‘Sweet Emotion’ to the cheekiness of ‘Love in an Elevator,’ to the classic ballad ‘Dream On’ shows why Activision chose us to headline this game based on the diversity of the Aerosmith catalog. Not only is songwriting a bitch, but then it goes and has puppies.”
A scene from the upcoming game Guitar Hero: Aerosmith
In the game, players will progress through Aerosmith’s career, playing a lot of the band’s greatest hits along with “songs from celebrated artists that the band has either performed with or has been inspired by in some way.” Game designers will also pay close attention to venues from the band’s historical moments.
“On a larger scale, it’s cool for us to be pioneers helping to rebuild the music industry through a format like video games,” Perry adds. “It’s great for rock since the record companies are struggling to make sense of how things are changing. Fans want to get and experience music in new formats–and there are going to be some of them who will play the game, then pick up the guitar for real and start bands. It’s what’s happening now, and it’s only going to build more momentum in the future. It’s a massive change for the music business.”
Aerosmith has sold more than 150 million albums worldwide and a video game channel will no doubt add to that success. It’s time to let the music do the talking.
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Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is being developed by Neversoft Entertainment for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3; the Wii version is being developed by Vicarious Visions; the PlayStation 2 version is being developed by Budcat.
