journalists to be one of the most influential video games of the first decade of the 21st century. The series has sold more than 25 million units worldwide, earning US$2 billion at retail. Activision claimed in 2009 that the Guitar Hero franchise was the 3rd largest game franchise after the Mario and Madden NFL franchises. Activision also claimed that the third main title of the series, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, is the first single video game title to exceed $1 billion in sales. Despite early success, the series, along with the overall rhythm game genre, suffered from poor sales starting in 2009. Despite asserting consumer research suggested continued solid demand for the series, Activision later stated that the series was on hiatus for 2011, amid the development of a seventh main installment that was later cancelled as the emerging product was considered to be of poor quality. Activision later shut down sales of the series' downloadable content, although users who purchased material from it previously may still play what they bought. Guitar Hero Live, released in October 2015, was the first new title in the series in five years, considered to be a reboot of the series and developed by FreeStyleGames, who had developed the DJ Hero games. Following a lukewarm reception and sales, Activision laid off many of the game's developers and sold the studio to Ubisoft, later shutting down the game's streaming DLC service. History Origins and development at Harmonix (2005–2006) Guitar Hero was created from a partnership between RedOctane, then their own company that produced specialized video game controllers, and Harmonix, a music video game development company who had previously produced Frequency, Amplitude, and Karaoke Revolution. RedOctane was seeking to bring in a Guitar Freaks-like game, highly popular in Japan at the time, into Western markets, and approached Harmonix about helping them to develop a music game involving a guitar controller. Both companies agreed to it, and went on to produce Guitar Hero in 2005. The title was highly successful, leading to the development of its successful sequel, Guitar Hero II, in 2006. While the original controllers for the first Guitar Hero game were designed by Ryan Lesser, Rob Kay, Greg LoPiccolo, and Alex Rigopulous of Harmonix and built by the Honeybee Corporation of China, subsequent iterations and future controllers were developed inhouse at RedOctane, with development led primarily by Jack McCauley. Now it’s known