rock

It's been a rough month for the former superstars of the rhythm genre.

Rock Band label MTV Games ceased its publishing operations, which was shortly followed by the game's recently sold developer, Harmonix, laying off up to 15 percent of its staff.

The capper came Wednesday, as Activision disbanded its Guitar Hero business unit, confirming that there would be no 2011 installment in the franchise and the company will stop making new downloadable songs for the Hero franchise of games.

In a posting on the official Rock Band forums yesterday, Harmonix's John Drake offered condolences for his … Read more

Like a great band breaking up, Guitar Hero is no more. Activision, the company behind the once-popular series of games, said today in a quarterly earnings statement that it's pulling the plug on the franchise.

The series, which has been around for six years, hasn't been profitable lately. About two years ago, the franchise had racked up more than $2 billion in sales from its various installments. But sales plummeted to the point that the latest installment in the series, Warriors of Rock, sold fewer than 100,000 copies during its debut month last September. Part of the reason is competition from a new generation of games that don't need specialized controllers, especially those for the PS3's Move and the Xbox 360's Kinect.

The brand has had many iterations, including "World Tour," which featured many notable musicians as playable characters, and mobile versions for iOS devices and Nintendo's DS series of handhelds. The game's popularity paved the way for bigger games like Rock Band, which have likely also played a role in Guitar Hero's decreased sales.

"It doesn't surprise me," said Amanda Caparoon, a Seattle bartender and music gaming fan, when told Activision was burying the brand. "There's cooler stuff now, like Rock Band. And dance-based games are where it's at now." … Read more

When researchers at Brigham Young University's School of Family Life decided to investigate the role parents play in gaming with their adolescent kids, they discovered a statistically significant gender divide.

For boys, gaming with a parent did not have much of an effect on positive behavior, aggression, family connection, and mental health. But for girls, gaming with a parent resulted in as much as a 20 percent variation on those outcomes--specifically, improving positive behavior, mental health, and family connections.

The team studied 287 families with adolescents ages 11 to 16; the boys played Call of Duty, Wii Sports, and … Read more

The farm just isn't exciting as the city.

CityVille, the hit social game from Zynga that allows users to build a city from the ground up, now has over 100 million monthly active users on Facebook. That user base is all the more impressive when one considers that the game hit that mark a little over one month since its release.

CityVille's meteoric rise has made FarmVille, another wildly popular title on Facebook, look, well, desolate. That game has over 57 million active users, according to its Facebook page.

Zynga's CityVille success has helped the company maintain … Read more

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

It's tablet time at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show. We are expecting to see tablets from Verizon, Toshiba, Lenovo, and Vizio

Toshiba will also show off a glasses-free 3D laptop

Netflix announces a one-click button coming to TV remotes

A new iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app helps you read your blood pressure

The newest version of Rock Band will feature the music of Johnny Cash

Be sure to keep up with all things CES this week here on CNET

Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

Amazon invests in Living Social while rumors persist that Google wants to purchase Groupon

eBay purchases local shopping site Milo.com

Google Earth Engine launches with 25 years of archived satellite imagery

Google Doodles are now available on mobile searches

A new version of Rock Band is out for iPad and iPhone

A Pennsylvania couple is awarded $1 in a trespassing case against Google

The Wi-Fi Baby 3G will help you monitor your little ones--and big ones--while you're away

First take:

Is it worth switching to a new browser? Marc Andreessen never had to force users to ask that question when he built Mosaic in 1993. For most early adopters, it was their first browser.

But now he's backing the development of another browser, RockMelt. This browser is not perfect, but it does show that there's room yet in the market. If Facebook built a browser, it would probably look a lot like this.

This has been tried before. The other social Web browser, Flock, integrates Facebook features. Also, like Flock (at least the new 3.0 version), … Read more

First take:

Is it worth switching to a new browser? Marc Andreessen never had to force users to ask that question when he built Mosaic in 1993. For most early adopters, it was their first browser.

But now he's backing the development of another browser, RockMelt. This browser is not perfect, but it does show that there's room yet in the market. If Facebook built a browser, it would probably look a lot like this.

This has been tried before. The other social Web browser, Flock, integrates Facebook features. Also, like Flock (at least the new 3.0 version), … Read more

While the Big Five browsers duke it out to see which one can come up with the best mix of speed, compatibility, and add-ons, social networking bruisers Flock 3 (Windows only) and RockMelt beta (Windows | Mac) have taken off the kid gloves to beat each other senseless over Twitter and Facebook integration.

This isn't a fair match by a long shot. Chromium-fueled Flock 3 has been available since June 2010, and claims 500,000 users. (Just as a point of comparison, the Mozilla Gecko-powered version 2 of Flock has 8.5 million users and has been on the market … Read more