Activision should make efforts to re-merge the Guitar Hero and Rock Band names to cure ailing sales, according to one analyst...

While EA enjoys critical success with the Rock Band franchise, Activision's rival Guitar Hero suffers declining interest and commentary that the name is being over-milked in the name of sales. Not that the games have managed to avoid a commerical slump in recent years. To counter the downward curve, Activision should seek to acquire the Rock Band license to reboot their cash-cow, or at least that's the view of Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creatz.

Gamers will no doubt remember the days when there was only Guitar Hero. But after original developers Harmonix were sold to MTV, a rival music title was imminent, and 2007 saw the release of a new face. Rock Band boasted the original team behind the whole craze, but it was going up against the Activision-owned Guitar Hero behemoth. Fast-forward a few years, and Guitar Hero seems to be on the decline while Rock Band enjoys healthy success.

Creatz thinks the only way Activision can get their franchise back on its feet is to look to re-joining the rivals through a deal with MTV's parent company.

"We believe Activision's best option at this point would be to approach Viacom with idea of (re)merging the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises through a sale or joint venture agreement."

But with two big Guitar Hero games having just released in the form of Warriors of Rock and DJ Hero 2, surely the franchise will generate big bucks for Activision this holiday season? Creatz isn't so optimistic:

"We expect the two GH titles to struggle to sell 1m units combined in the US during Q4 2010, versus our prior expectation of roughly 2.5m total US units. The only silver lining is that the music genre should cease to be a focus of investor concerns as it has now become fairly immaterial to overall results."

It's all too easy for analysts to analyse hypothetically, but it seems very unlikely such a merger of franchises will happen in the near future. But what do you think should be Activision's next move for Guitar Hero?