Guitar Hero, Rock Band Increase Guitar Sales
We’ve posted before on the question of whether Guitar Hero and Rock Band helps to promote people playing the guitar or detracts from it. It looks like some research has been done on this very question.
Guitar Center, MTV Games (Rock Band) and Activision (Guitar Hero) have collaborated on a national survey of 7,000 respondents to see how the players of Rock Band and Guitar Hero felt about playing an actual guitar.
Here are some of the interesting findings in the study:
- 67% of Guitar Hero and Rock Band users who do not currently play an instrument say they are likely to start playing one in the next two years
- 72% of musicians that play Guitar Hero or Rock Band report using their own instruments more frequently
- 80% of Guitar Hero and Rock Band users would like to receive an instrument as a holiday gift this year
The last one might have been a bit of a loaded question from Guitar Center in the survey, but nonetheless this is definitely encouraging news for Guitar Center and other music retailers. Guitar Center reported spikes in sales of entry-level guitars in the last quarter of 2007 by 20.7% and in the first quarter of 2008 by 26.9%.
Via GameDaily
Tags: guitar center, Guitar Hero, rock band
5 Great Acoustic Guitars for Kids | Fretbase: Guitars, Tabs, Chords and More – December 1st, 2008 at 6:37 am
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Alright, but I still assert that the game reinforces a questionable psychology of musicianship. Chris Berry of the band Panjea returned from his learning voyage to Africa (where he was studying under griots) and told a story of how the people there could scarcely believe that here in the US we have a stage where one person plays music and everyone just sits and watches. In a culture where everyone participates, this is a tragedy akin to leaving one tree standing in the rainforest.
Or to quote Fight Club, “We were all brought up to believe we’d be millionaires and rockstars…”
Rock Band, at least, is teaching kids to play TOGETHER, rather than compete like hungry dogs for some imaginary fame token.
I strongly approve of the Nintendo DS and iPhone applications that enable wireless jamming. But the rockstar mythos as I see it is broken, and encouraging it is leading us down the wrong road.
Beatles: Rock Band To Teach Vocal Harmonies | Fretbase: Guitars, Tabs, Chords and More – April 16th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
[...] games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. We’ve posted a number of times on this debate here, here and here. Some see it as poor substitute for the real thing but I find myself in favor of the [...]
hahahahahaha, sorry i didn’t read the article, but that picture is hilarious!! hehe
Fender’s Digital Strategy | Fretbase – February 1st, 2010 at 11:01 am
[...] digital strategy. The No. 1 guitar manufacturer is embracing the Rock Band phenomenon (we noticed this trend in 2008) by trying to bridge the gap between the casual gamer and the beginner guitarist. The article is [...]