Rock Band 2 usually gets a bit more love from critics than Guitar Hero: World Tour because RB was made by the original Guitar Hero developer Harmonix. Gamers have voted with their wallets, though, and it seems they picked Guitar Hero: World Tour by a landslide in 2008.

The NPD Group compiled the 2008 US sales for Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour across all platforms and it seems GH:WT sold 3.4 million to RB2's 1.7 million. In truth, 1.7 million is still a strong haul but RB and GH are direct rivals so Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is probably doing an end-zone dance in his office right now.

Gamespot notes that the games' release dates may have played a factor. While Guitar Hero: World Tour was released simultaneously on Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3 on October 26th, Rock Band 2 had a phased release. The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of RB2 actually arrived in stores faster than GH:WT (September 14th and October 19th, respectively) but the PS2 and Wii versions didn't arrive in stores until December 18th. Thus, we're looking at figures that contain only 13 days' worth of sales for the PS2/Wii versions of RB2 versus two months' worth of sales for GH:WT on the same platforms. If that's true, perhaps the sales will even out a bit over time.

The ability of the Guitar Hero name to generate additional sales shouldn't be understated, though. To the average person who doesn't know that Harmonix developed the first two GH games, Rock Band might just seem like a rip-off. The differing song catalogs for the games could have been a factor, too.