Activision Blizzard chief executive Bobby Kotick.

FEB. 9, 2011 • In the release of it financial results for the calendar year ending Dec. 31, Activision Blizzard reported that it was disbanding Activision Publishing’s Guitar Hero business unit and discontinuing development on its Guitar Hero 7 game for 2011. The publisher is also intends to establish a new Call of Duty-focused development studio called Beachhead that Activision will use to create a digital platform for the Call of Duty community.

Impact: Guitar Hero provided a great run for Activision but clearly the product was not able to support a huge team dedicated to providing full-fledged regular updates.  However, this does not mean the entire franchise will die.  The run came and went but for Activision there is still the possibility of releasing new Guitar Hero products on a less frequent basis.