George_Wrisley August 19, 2008 PlayStation 2, Wii, Xbox 360 2 views Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

Pete LeGrant has been talking about how well the game industry is doing. Now GameDaily reports that a rather large chunk of growth and sales in 2008 has been because of the music games:

We all know that Guitar Hero and Rock Band are huge, and now other game companies are joining the music act, such as Disney with Ultimate Band , Nintendo with Wii Music , and Konami with Rock Revolution .

Just how important is this growing sector of the industry? According to
UBS analyst Ben Schachter, music games have been a “key driver” this
year, with “sales of music-themed games responsible for 19% of overall
industry software dollars in July (15% YTD) and 44% of y/y industry
dollar growth during the month (32% of growth YTD).”

Total dollar sales in the U.S. games industry hit $9.47 billion through
July, according to the latest NPD data. That’s 35 percent ahead of 2007
at this point, and Guitar Hero and Rock Band have no doubt been major contributors. In fact, Schachter points out that Guitar Hero franchise dollars year-to-date are up a whopping 87 percent. In terms of units, Guitar Hero is up 82 percent this year. On a dollars basis, the recent DS release of Guitar Hero: On Tour took in more than $15 million in July alone. Moreover, MTV Games’ Rock Band bundles on Wii, PS2 and Xbox 360 combined for nearly $47 million in sales in July.

The business is booming, and it shows no signs of slowing down. If anything, with Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2 both launching this fall/holiday season, we’d anticipate the music games sector to account for possibly more than a third of industry growth in 2008, a year which will undoubtedly shatter all previous sales records.

I might just have to sell that Segway stock.

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