Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick says that the Guitar Hero franchise has now surpassed $2 billion in sales, making it only the third franchise in gaming history to reach the milestone.

“The Guitar Hero franchise in fact this quarter surpassed the $2 billion mark and was only the third franchise in the history of gaming beside Super Mario and Madden to ever achieve that milestone,” he said during a quarterly earnings call, transcribed by Seeking Alpha.

Guitar Hero remained one of the top-five bestselling franchises in the US and Europe during the quarter ended March 31, during which time it was also the bestselling third-party title in the US across all platforms in dollars, Activision said.

With a number of new Hero titles set for release later this year, Kotick said that Activision is “bullish” on the music category. He noted that new series entries would “not only serve the current user base but also provide… significant additional expansion opportunity to new genres so that we can start tapping into the significant number of households that are part of the 170 million installed base of hardware but haven’t yet engaged with Guitar Hero.

Kotick also took a dig at rival music franchise Rock Band, which he said had seen “a rather precipitous [sales] fall-off.”