 In a July 2011 interview with Forbes , Kotick stated that while the publisher was " going to stop selling Guitar Hero altogether " , they were " going to go back to the studios and we ’ re going to use new studios and reinvent " the series , but a former <unk> of Vicarious Visions has stated that as of 2012 , all development of Guitar Hero has come to an end within Activision . Another source close to Vicarious Visions had reported to Kotaku that while Guitar Hero 7 was in development under an Activision studio , the game was considered a " disaster " . The cancelled game omitted the additional instruments and used only a guitar peripheral , <unk> the unit to include a 6 @-@ button mechanism replacing the strum bar ; the resulting unit was considered too expensive to manufacture and purchase . The developers had also started the game development from scratch to try to create new characters and venues that would be more reactive to the actual songs being played to give the feel of a music video , but ultimately this proved too much of a challenge and had to be scrapped . Further , with a limited budget , the song selection was limited to " low @-@ budget " hits of the 1990s , or at times reusing songs that had previously been included in Guitar Hero games . Though the team had a two @-@ year development cycle , it was closed down after Activision president Eric <unk> had seen the current state of the project at the one @-@ year point . 
