Guitar Hero gamers ditch consoles for TV

by Darren Davidson, revolutionmagazine.com 16-Sep-09, 15:00

LONDON - The Xbox, Wii and PlayStation could become marginalised if Activision, the maker of Guitar Hero, is successful at developing games that plug directly into TV sets.

The potentially ground breaking move was announced by Robert Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard, at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco.

Kotick said he expects Activision games - specifically Guitar Hero - to bypass consoles altogether, and suggested other games could follow the same route. At present, Guitar Hero uses non-standard controllers that console owners need to buy separately anyway.

"I think what the untethered Guitar Hero does is equal the playing field a little more and give you some leverage with first parties when it comes to downloadable content and the business model," he said.

He added that the company expects "many of our products to be playable independent of a console".

Kotick said his prediction was encouraged by the development of 1080p TVs that let users stream content from their PCs.

He also suggested that Activison would soon harness the power of social media, with gamers able to be integrate their Facebook profiles into Guitar Hero, letting them make songs to share with friends, post high scores or favourite songs on their profile pages.