With a little help from the Beatles, Super Mario and price cuts from Sony and Microsoft, the slumping video game industry is hoping for a sales resurrection this fall.
The season gets a late-summer start today, 1st September, with the release of “Guitar Hero 5,” a game featuring music from the Rolling Stones, Nirvana and other popular bands. Then on Sept. 9 comes the launch of “The Beatles: Rock Band,” which marks the rock icons’ debut in a video game.
Plagued by the recession and a lackluster game release schedule for much of this year, the video game industry — which is bigger than the music business by some estimates — has fallen into a slump. It has been the first once since the latest game consoles — the Xbox 360, the Wii and the PlayStation 3 — were launched in 2005 and 2006.