Red Octane president Kai Huang has said that Activision is hoping to introduce a subscription service for its popular Guitar Hero franchise.
“That's definitely one of the things we would love to do,” he told the Seattle Times. “There are a lot of issues around music licensing. Consumers want it; I know I want it. We're trying to make that happen.”
The news comes shortly after Activision Blizzard CFO Thomas Tippl said that the company plans “to test and ultimately launch additional online monetisation models” for leading franchises like Call Of Duty”.
And while sales of music games have declined this year, Huang believes the genre and the Hero franchise have legs.
“We're really just at the beginning of music games. What we love and what we're constantly looking at is, how do you expose people to new music and new instruments? In the US, country music is obviously very popular. Globally, classical music has always been very interesting. Latin music — there are just so many different genres of music and instruments that haven't been tapped into yet.”
Despite “weak" pre-order activity and first month US sales of just 122,000 copies, Huang added of DJ Hero: “We're planning for it to be the No. 1 new [intellectual property] of the year”.