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Confirmed - Activision chops Guitar Hero and True Crime, no music or Hawk games in '11

Activision's just announced it has canned development on True Crime: Hong Kong as well as "disband" the Guitar Hero business unit.

It said in the financial release for its full-year fiscal 2011 financial report that "due to continued declines in the music genre, the company will disband Activision Publishing's Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011."

On True Crime, it added that it would "stop development on True Crime: Hong Kong. These decisions are based on the desire to focus on the greatest opportunities that the company currently has to create the world's best interactive entertainment experiences."

In a statement on its website, developer United Front Games said it was "sorry" it did not finish the project.

"We are sorry we did not get a chance to complete this project with Acitivision, but we understand why," the statement reads.

"We are both committed to doing quality games and nothing less. Maybe we will have a chance to work together in the future, but in the meantime we are setting our creative sites on a different horizon."

Furthermore, Activision COO Thomas Tippl has just confirmed in the company's financial call that no Tony Hawk games will be released in 2011 as well as other music titles from the company, meaning no DJ Hero sequel this year.

It follows according reports from GI and Eurogamer that GH and TC would be canned outright with layoffs at DJ Hero developer Freestyle Games.

GI also claims that the publisher will now focus on three of its key brands: Call of Duty, StarCraft and World of Warcraft.

BioWare developer Manveer Heir, who used to work at Activision-owned Raven Software, also claims that Vicarious Visions has suffered layoffs.

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StarCraft

PC

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True Crime: Hong Kong

PS3, Xbox 360, PC

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World of Warcraft

PC, Mac

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About the Author

Johnny Cullen

Contributor

Johnny has experience at a wide range of games media outlets, having written for Eurogamer, Play Magazine, PC Gamer, GameDaily, and more. He worked at VG247 pumping out news at an astonishing rate for several years. More recently, he founded the games website PlayDiaries.

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