guitar hero 3 becomes first billion-dollar game

Activision announced last week that over the holiday shopping season, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock became the first single game title to ever reach the billion dollar sales mark on its own. Fun fact: sales of actual musical guitars are up, too! And of course companies are attributing the rising numbers to the popularity of music simulation games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I have to say I had opportunity to check out the DS version of Guitar Hero recently and it seems pretty cool if not mind-blowingly easy compared to the console versions.

Data from national instrument retailer Guitar Center indicated that sales of real guitars were also up. Griffith said two-thirds of non-musicians exposed to music games plan to start playing a real instrument in the next couple of years, while three-fourths of musicians said they've spent more time with their instruments since picking up a music game.

Activision: Guitar Hero III passes $1.b