Interesting note regarding DJ Hero, where “interesting” means “potentially bad news.” One of those fancy analyst types, someone at Cowen and Company, has slashed sales expectations by a little more than 50 percent. That’s nothing to brush aside if you’re Activision.
Here’s the juicy part of the report:
On DJ Hero, despite some recent positive comments from company management about pre-orders, we remain very cautious about the title’s prospects at launch,” he noted. “A survey of online retailers indicates a demand profile that is well below what we would have expected to see just a few days before launch for a title that was destined to be a big (or even modest) hit. As a result, we are reducing our estimate for DJ Hero Q4 US unit sales from 1.6 million to 600,000, and we are reducing our first year estimate from 2.5 million to 950,000
Someone at Kotaku wrote, “It seems the turntables have turned on Activision,” which legitimately made me laugh.
Look, for a time I was into that whole DJ scene, and still am to an extent. That’s why I wrote what I wrote: that the barrier to entry to becoming a competent DJ, what with today’s software, is a lot lower than it is to becoming a competent guitarist. Plus, DJing is a little more niche than guitaring; who didn’t want to play the guitar growing up?
Now, the analyst isn’t saying that DJ Hero won’t sell at all, just that, based on the early hype, and the Hero brand name, it he and his company initially expected it to do better.
Or, if you want to be a cynic, you can blame Activision for burning through all these music games in such a short period of time that people are either A) tired of them or B) they’ve played enough if them, and don’t need to play any more.
In any event, the game comes out tomorrow for $120 with turntable. (Maybe the price has something to do with it, too?)
via Kotaku
Pic, of course, via Penny-Arcade
I’m planning on picking it up and this will be my first “music game” purchase ever…
Saw it at best buy. They have a demo unit out running the game… Stupidest thing I have ever seen.
I suppose if your lifes ambition is to be a techno house music DJ you might like it.
I tried it out at BestBuy and really liked it, but $120 is just too much so i’ll wait and see if I can get it cheap used or something.
$120 is ridiculous for a game and just one peripheral…. I remember when I got the original Guitar Hero, it was like $70 or $80. Even Guitar Hero now is $100, this is just a rip off.
Perhaps it would be accurate to say that anyone interested in being a DJ is probably already playing around with the real thing (rather than a toy) and those who aren’t interested… aren’t interested.
Kinda reminds me of the point several years back when there were a whole bunch of fishing games released on consoles and on the PC.
And no one cared.
The people who might have cared had actually gone fishing.
lol..i like the cartoon:)