Guitar Hero
Following a five-year hiatus, as described below, Activision announced "Guitar Hero Live" for release in late 2015 on most seventh-generation and eighth-generation consoles. "Live" was developed to rebuild the game from the ground up, and while the gameplay remains similar to the earlier titles, focusing primarily on the lead guitar, it uses a 3-button guitar controller with each button having "up" and "down" positions, making for more complex tabulators. The game using live footage of a rock concert, taken from the perspective of the lead guitarist, as to provide a more immersive experience.
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Activision called "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock" its "largest product launch ever", selling more than 1.4 million copies, and making over $100 million in its first week of release in North America; another 1.9 million copies were sold in the following month. Subsequently, the company was concerned that they were unable to meet the game's demand for the 2007 holiday season. As of July 15, 2008, the game has sold more than eight million copies. During the first seven months of 2008, the game sold 3.037 million units in the United States, 412,000 in the United Kingdom, and 26,000 in Japan, for a total of 3.475 million units, according to the NPD Group, GfK Chart-Track, and Enterbrain. More than two million copies of the game were sold for the Wii platform, making it the best-selling third-party title for the platform. Game sales during the first 12 months after the game's release were over $750 million. At the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, Activision CEO Mike Griffith stated that "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock" is the first retail video game to exceed one billion dollars in sales. According to accumulated data from NPD Group in January 2010, "Guitar Hero III" is the second best-selling video game in the United States since 1995, following "Wii Play". In March 2011, the title had become the top selling game with $830.9 million in lifetime sales.