Kotick: Guitar Hero's Dedicated Resources Enable 'Domination'

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, commenting at an investor conference, says that the company's Guitar Hero games outsell competitor Electronic Arts' Rock Band by a ratio of six units to one. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia XVII Conference, as reported on by game weblog Kotaku, Kotick explained that the publisher has a unique advantage due to its access to "30% of the world’s music" with Universal's catalog. He also believes that Activision's employee headcount has kept the company a step ahead of its rhythm game competitors. "Our next-nearest competitor has a couple of hundred people working on these projects," said Kotick. "We have close to 2000 people just dedicated to the Guitar Hero note tracking, introduction of new hardware, introduction of new software, and so we just have a lot more in the way of resources available to us to continue to dominate the category." Activision has over a dozen titles released or planned for its multiplatform Guitar Hero franchise, including spin-offs and portable titles, compared to Rock Band's sole release for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and Wii. Earlier this week, Kotick revealed that the publisher intends to triple the amount of its total released Guitar Hero games and content by 2010. Towards that end, the company has no fewer than seven studios working on the Guitar Hero franchise. Last week, B-Boy developer FreeStyleGames was acquired and will be providing localized content for the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour.