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Analyst Doug Creutz from Cowen Group has good and bad news for Activision Blizzard.

The good news: Creutz thinks investors don’t need to worry about the music genre anymore.

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Cowen Group analyst Doug Creutz believes the lack of large sales for Tiger Wood PGA Tour 11 during June may have something to do with the scandal surrounding the golfer.

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A Cowen Group survey has revealed that game reviews are the “least important factor” to consumers when deciding on which title to purchase.

Instead, according to analyst Doug Creutz, gamers rely mainly on word of mouth and publishers should stop focusing on scoring a high review.

“We believe that while Metacritic scores may be correlated to game quality and word of mouth, and thus somewhat predictive of title performance, they are unlikely in and of themselves to drive or undermine the success of a game.

“We note this, in part, because of persistent rumors that some game developers have been jawboning game reviewers into giving their games higher critical review scores. We believe the publishers are better served by spending their time on the development process than by grade-grubbing after the fact.”

More through CVG.

Cowen Group analyst Doug Creutz has predicted that Guitar Hero will be the sole winner in the music genre category, and beat out all others this year.

“We believe music genre sales for the company will be driven by an expansion of the release slate in 2009, which should broaden sales to core consumers,” Creutz told Gamasutra. “We also believe that Guitar Hero is likely to face less competition from Rock Band this year, driving a gain in market share for Activision Blizzard.”

Creutz does not see The Beatles: Rock Band as being a threat to Activision.

This is mainly due to the high price point of the collector’s edition. Creutz said it will do nothing to help out peripheral sales.

He does, however, believe that Acti’s DJ Hero will freshen up the genre and cause a surge in peripheral uptake.

More through the link.