The music genre death was natural

I feel like there it is assumed as fact that  Activision killed Guitar Hero and the music genre at large by over saturating the market; however, I think that the music game genre itself had a built in short life span, and that from a business perspective Activision made the right choice maximizing their music games while they were still popular.  Even back to the Dance Dance Revolution days, the music genre has had a boom or bust style.  Let's say Guitar Hero Aerosmith never came out, would that improve Rock Band 3 sales?  I would say no.  I think after 5 years of plastic instruments, regardless of the number of games, everyone is just ready for a break.

I feel like there it is assumed as fact that  Activision killed Guitar Hero and the music genre at large by over saturating the market; however, I think that the music game genre itself had a built in short life span, and that from a business perspective Activision made the right choice maximizing their music games while they were still popular.  Even back to the Dance Dance Revolution days, the music genre has had a boom or bust style.  Let's say Guitar Hero Aerosmith never came out, would that improve Rock Band 3 sales?  I would say no.  I think after 5 years of plastic instruments, regardless of the number of games, everyone is just ready for a break.

you could say that about modern day shooters

Yeah, i think it got to the point where there were too many, was kinda happy that guitar hero was axed in the end, you do end up hating some really good songs =/

I think for a long time everyone was waiting for the plastic instrument game market to reach saturation and in the end it happened. While I'm sad that the people behind Guitar Hero are now out of a job from a creative standpoint I think they took entirely the right decision in ending the franchise. I think some real strides were made during the existence of the genre to keep it original though, it wasn't just five years of playing plastic guitars. We've not only seem co-operative play introduced, the standardisation of master tracks in rhythm games, the bar massively raised for the standard number of tracks in a rhythm game, and the market for rhythm game DLC completely boom, but with the Rock Band franchise we've also seen the introduction of the microphone, drums, keyboard, and even real guitar to the set up. While the Guitar Hero franchise did taper off towards the end I thought Harmonix were doing some consistently fantastic things with the modern rhythm game formula throughout the last few years.

I was not saying the music game genre was not making progress.  One could argue Rock Band 3 is the best out of all of them, but I think that proves my point.  We have the best music game ever and very few people bought it.  I know some people that liked the first Guitar Hero and then thought it jumped the shark at 2.  I think it just had a short life span and despite the genre improving as a whole, it was ultimately doomed to collapse.  Maybe it will have a big comeback a couple years from now when people are ready for it.

They ruined it by treating it like a sports game. Had they just kept the equipment like it was, or released reiterations without an all new game every year, and just used the DLC model they have, I could see it still being a big deal.

My first experience with music games was Rock Band 2, and after like a week I was already bored.  It was fun, but kind of a gimmick.  It's pretty simple gameplay, so once you get tired of playing these fake plastic instruments there's not much point in ever going back to it.