Guitar Hero World Tour to be Sold in UK Instrument Stores

With Activsion promoting Guitar Hero World Tour in every possible way imaginable it should come as no surprise that they are teaming up with Active Music Distribution to start selling the game in musical instrument stores across the UK.

According to a report from GamesIndustry.biz, the game bundle which includes all the plastic instruments you need to cater to your rock star fantasies will be hitting these stores come November 14 when the game launches across the pond. This is apparently not only going to help promote the game for a vastly different market than what game companies are used to courting, but, should also pull gamers who have been inspired to take up a musical instrument by Guitar Hero into a store that they would normally just pass by.

Lee Worsely, the director of Active Music Distribution, thinks that the trend of music games complied with the inspiration that comes from them is a nice change of pace:

“For many years computer games have taken people away from learning a musical instrument. That trend is now changing… here is a game that positively encourages it. This is a real opportunity for stores to embrace the platform and bring new customers into their stores.”

While it is definitely out of the norm to picture, let alone actually see a videogame sitting along side a Steinway Grand Piano or an Alvarez Guitar, Activision is not swayed by the sheer audacity of it. A spokesman for Activison added that the company is looking forward to developing the market in the coming months, and is pleased that with “this growing connection between Guitar Hero and music making…finding a partner who could take the game to the grass roots of music making seemed an obvious channel to explore.”

If this goes over well in the UK and actually gets people interested in playing a real instrument instead of a peripheral, it would be safe to assume that we could eventually see the same sort of cross-promotional back slapping here in America. While it is indeed commendable for a gaming company to want people to get off the couch and actually learn a wonderful skill like this, the bottom-line is that in reality it is still advertising their product, albeit in a different marketplace. When will having a certain product shoved down our throats on a daily basis stop? Overly saturating a market with your product only leads to customer disdain, and it is quite possible that eventually Activision could be shooting itself in the foot with these games. I mean, what’s next? Guitar Hero Toddler Edition sold at Babies R Us?