Guitar Hero Metallica Reveal Trailer

So what if the Metallica edition of Guitar Hero still hasn’t been officially announced? The band itself has been talking about it all willy-nilly; it’s been in Game Informer; there was even a teaser in Guitar Hero World Tour. And now … well, the trailer is out. Not from its publisher, Activision, but on the band’s website.

Perhaps some fine print in the band’s contract stipulates that it gets to handle the PR for the game. Perhaps the mere mention of the game is being considered an “exclusive,” since it’s “unannounced.” Perhaps it’s time for a press release already.

Peak Starpex Guitar Hero Controller Review

Eyewitness News Reporter Tommy Noel continues to test toys this month for his “Does it Really Work?” segment.

For today’s product, some of the testers just couldn’t put it down!

A lot of Channel 3 employees like Guitar Hero, so we’ll have them test out the Peak Starpex Guitar Hero Controller.

Guitar hero has caught the attention of gamers of all ages.

“Whenever I go to my cousins that have it I usually just play it the whole time,” says Theo Dawson.

“After a hard days work, I go home and relieve stress by playing Guitar Hero,” says Kerri Huyck.

“It makes you feel way awesome,” says Scott Dixon.

But could the Peak Starpex Wood Controller make you even more awesome?

First impressions. All three of our testers immediately noticed the difference in size compared to a regular controller.

“It was really heavy,” says Kerri.

“It was big. Compared to the others, it’s a lot bigger,” says Scott.

“It’s a little heavy but it’s pretty cool,” says Theo.

So the coolness factor may make up for the extra weight. Our testers consist of experts, close-to-experts, and novices. All played a song at their appropriate skill level.

“The square buttons made it easier to roll around your fingers,” says Theo.

“It just looked way cooler,” says Scott.

The testers had their opinions fairly quicky of the Starpex, it was just difficult to pry them away from it. The main drawback for our testers, the size.

“I just didn’t like the weight, that’s it,” says Theo.

But our evening producer Scott was impressed.

“It was better than I expected. The other guitars are all made of plastic and cheaply made, this one felt pretty solid could last thru a lot of stuff,” says Scott.

Turning to the Noel-O-Meter.

“I would give it a three,” says Kerri.

“I’d give it a four,” says Scott.

“Maybe a four,” says Theo.

So this may be a good Christmas gift… Except for Sarah Schwabe.

“We failed, that’s how bad we are,” says Sarah Schwabe.

New Guitar Hero World Tour DLC announced

Activision has announced another month’s worth of downloadable content for Guitar Hero World Tour which will be released weekly right through to the end of January 2009.

This latest batch of DLC includes an eclectic mix of tunes from the likes of country superstars Brooks and Dunn to Australia’s own Silverchair, Wolfmother and The Vines. The biggest chunk of DLC comes in the form of the previously announced Oasis album “Dig Out Your Soul” which will be available for 1520 Microsoft Points (or $19 US) on January 29.

PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 owners will have the choice of buying individual songs for $2 US (160 Microsoft Points) or snagging the entire bundle for $5.50 US (440 Microsoft Points). Wii owners will be able to purchase individual tracks for 200 Wii Points each, but no bundles will be available on the Wii Shop Channel.

The Guitar Hero World Tour DLC release schedule for December – January will look a little like this:

Untitled Track Pack (Released December 23)
* Hinder – Use Me
* Nickeback – Because of You
* Rev Theory – Light it Up

Country Rock Track Pack (Released January
* Rascal Flatts – Me and My Gang
* Brad Paisley – Ticks
* Brooks & Dunn – Hillbilly Deluxe

Travis Barker Track Pack (Released January 15)
* Blink 182 -”What’s My Age Again
* +44 – Lycanthrope
* Flo Rida – Low (Travis Barker Remix)

Australian Rock Track Pack (Released January 22)
* Silverchair – Tomorrow
* Wolfmother – Dimension
* The Vines – Outtathaway!

Oasis’ Dig Out Your Soul (Released January 29)
* The Turning
* I’m Outta Time
* (Get Off Your) High Horse Lady
* Falling Down
* To Be Where There’s Life
* Ain’t Got Nothin’
* The Nature of Reality
* Soldier On
* Bag it Up
* Waiting for the Rapture
* The Shock of Lightning

Activision Announces Guitar Hero 5

At an in-game advertising conference in downtown Manhattan, hosted by the Microsoft-owned Massive Inc, publisher Activision Blizzard announced its 2009 line-up of sequels with new entries slated for its Guitar Hero, Call of Duty and Tony Hawk franchises.

This falls in-line with what Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told investors in early November. When explaining as to why the company was dropping high-profile titles such as Chronicles of Riddick and Ghostbusters at the time, Kotick said “[These games] don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential [or] have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises.” It appears as though we can now say for certain as to which franchises he was referring to.

Activision didn’t have much to show of the freshly announced Guitar Hero 5 (which is most likely a working title), though since the conference was focused on advertising, it did show off a scene from the game, complete with a Burger King ad in the background. In the case of Call of Duty, gamers can look forward to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a sequel to last year’s hoo-rah inducing Middle-East shooter. While nothing has been confirmed, the absence of series numbering leads us to believe that Activision is planning to split the franchise in two, with one series focused on a modern setting while another stays in its original World War 2 format.

Veteran skater Tony Hawk is coming back from a vacation next October, having taken the year off due to an intense new rival in EA’s Skate. Activision is looking to mix things up for the tenth entry in the series, promising that players won’t be using a controller in their hands to play it, hinting towards a possible foot or motion based controller. Regardless, the title is once again being developed by the series creator, Neversoft.

Finally, if you’re tired of sequels, Activision-owned Bizarre Creations is working on an original racing title that they describe as “Mario Kart meets Forza Motorsports.” But you’re not tired of sequels, are you? Just in case, Bizarre will also be hard at work on the next James Bond game, though it is set to be an original adventure and not tied to any movie storyline whatsoever.

Guitar Hero Robot has 98% Accuracy

This Guitar Hero robot is in a league of its own, boasting an accuracy number up to 98%. In the video below, it hit 99% of notes in Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality” on Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii. Pretty crazy.

The Cythbot is not a humanoid robot but instead a collection of components cleverly patched together to create an automated device that can read the notes flowing on a screen and play them — mimicking what a gamer would do with the game.

Guitar Hero Team struggled for years before success

Although MTV bought Harmonix in 2006 for $175 million, the company struggled for years before making a profit.

Yes, more than a decade before Guitar Hero and Rock Band would simultaneously blow up the video game world and play savior to the music industry, founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy struggled mightily. The story has been documented before, but perhaps never so thoroughly or articulately than in last month’s Inc. Magazine.

Inc. Magazine, October 2008: They were obsessed with an idea. It started with “Growing Music From Seeds: Parametric Generation and Control of Seed-Based Music for Interactive Composition and Performance,” Rigopulos’s 80-page master’s thesis in 1994 at MIT’s Media Lab. The paper had something to do with encoding the essence of music into software.

That thesis would inspire a company — Harmonix opened shop in 1995 — and several awkward and ultimately unsuccessful products, including a piece of software titled The Axe that sold 300 copies and a joystick slapped onto a guitar and wired into a karaoke machine.

In 2000, Harmonix turned to games, but again met with failure. Their first title, Frequency, received a 9.0 rating from IGN, yet along with its sequel Amplitude, sold poorly.

Next up was 2003′s EyeToy: AntiGrav, a virtual hoverboard game that sold well, but left the Harmonix team feeling like they’d lost their connection to music, which was got them started in the first place.

The success was a punch in the gut. “We were like, God, are we just idiots?” Rigopulos says. “Are we a game company? Are we a music company?” “We were thinking, Is our entire company mission statement basically a complete flaw?” says Egozy.

Enter Red Octane — makers of the Dance Dance Revolution pad — a company that knew something about designing quality peripherals.

Harmonix and Red Octane teamed up to release Guitar Hero in 2005, and although Best Buy was initially the only store to buy units, the game would go on to revolutionize two industries.

In the last two months of 2005, Guitar Hero did about $15 million in sales, more than the previous 10 years of sales at Harmonix combined. And the train kept a-rollin’. Bars started having Guitar Hero nights. Real rock stars started playing. The raunchy cartoon South Park devoted an episode to the craze titled “Guitar Queer-O.” A pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, Joel Zumaya, missed the American League Championship Series in 2006 with an unexplained wrist injury. Yes, he had played too much Guitar Hero.

For more on Harmonix’s early struggles, watch GameSpot’s Behind the Games interview with co-founder Alex Rigopulos:

Zero Punctuation: Guitar Hero World Tour

This week, will Zero Punctuation’s rock star fantasies be fulfilled with Guitar Hero World Tour?

Guitar Hero turns gamers into musicians

Guitar Center, the world’s largest musical instrument retailer recently announced the findings of their national survey. The survey confirms that gamers who played Rock Band and Guitar Hero have become more interested in playing real instruments and not just the game peripherals. In addition, musicians who play the games use their actual instruments more frequently because of the games.

The survey found that 67 of Guitar Hero and Rock Band players who do not currently play a musical instrument said that they are likely to begin playing a real instrument in the next two years, thanks to the game publishers Activision and Harmonix titles. More surprisingly, 72 of musicians have spend more time playing the real thing since they started playing the titles.

As a result, Guitar Center sales in the last quarter of 2007 experienced a 20.7 boost for beginner-level electric guitars and amplifiers. This number grew even further to 26.9 during the first nine months of 2008.

Guitar Center executive VP and Chief Marketing Officer Norman Hajjar has this to say,

This spike of interest in playing actual instruments stemming from a video game is an unprecedented phenomenon. Most video games sell fantasy, but Guitar Hero and Rock Band are selling a dream that can be realized. These games plant an achievable goal in the heart of the player and that, in turn, drives our business.

To get more gamers to convert into musicians, Guitar Center has created the “Real Guitar” campaign, which gets gamers to pick up a real instrument during the holidays.

I don’t know about the survey, but it seems a bit inconclusive, especially the ones saying that they’re likely to purchase real instruments. Naturally, they’d want to be musicians since they play the games, but it doesn’t mean that they’re gonna follow through and become actual musicians. They would find that the level of skill and dedication required in playing a real guitar is very different from that of pushing buttons on a peripheral.

Guitar Hero Bicycle Battle!

Nothing is more entertaining than two nerds trashing each other over the internet. A gamer by the name of Madflux has racked up over a million hits on YouTube in one week, for this incredibly clever Bike Hero video. Using notes he drew on a sidewalk with colored chalk, he rides his bicycle around this neighborhood pretending the sidewalk is a Guitar Hero screen. Take a look:

Well, Guitar Hero legend Freddie Wong wasn’t pleased and has now tried to school MadFlux… by actually playing Guitar Hero on a bike! Using a wireless controller, Freddie pedals his bike as he follows a car with a backseat TV that’s displaying the game.

Even more impressive, Wong is playing the Dragonforce song, which is probably the hardest song on Guitar Hero III.

I gotta admit, as obnoxious as Freddie Wong is, I think he’s got MadFlux beat:

Bands’ sales feel the ‘Guitar Hero’ effect

DragonForce guitarist Herman Li and his speed metal bandmates used to play the video game Guitar Hero. Now, fans are flocking to the band after finding their song Through the Fire and Flames in the latest installment of the game, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.

“Our CD sales have gone up, and we are high up the charts on digital downloads,” Li says. “It’s great. We don’t play commercial music. It took everyone by surprise.”

More fans were converted last month when Ellen DeGeneres invited a young Guitar Hero expert onto her talk show to play DragonForce’s song, considered to be the toughest of all songs to play. (Go to YouTube and search for “Ellen” and “guitar hero”; you can also find her playing the game herself.)

“Somehow it seems our music really connects with the younger generation, gamers and non-gamers,” says Li, 29. “This is a game that is driving music sales when everybody is complaining about the video game industry taking money from movies and music.”

The Guitar Hero effect is real. DragonForce saw digital sales of Through the Fire rise from fewer than 2,000 weekly to a high of 37,825 the week ending Dec. 30, a week when many who got the game as a holiday gift were playing it. (Only one GH III song sold more, Guns N’ Roses’ Welcome to the Jungle at 38,330.)

Also since the game came out in late October, DragonForce’s album Inhuman Rampage has been atop Billboard magazine’s Top Heatseekers chart four times (it dropped to No. 4 this week). Overall sales of the album have reached 230,000, much more than the 75,000 sold in the band’s adopted home, the United Kingdom.

“There has been a steady buzz on the band, and you could just feel their star rising. Then (Guitar Hero III) hit, and it catapulted it to an entirely new level,” says Jonas Nachsin, president of DragonForce’s label, Roadrunner Records.

Two other Roadrunner artists, Slipknot and Kill Switch Engage, have seen increased sales from inclusion in the game. “You might be surprised. It’s not only digital sales but significant full-length sales of CDs,” Nachsin says. “Competition (to be in future games) will probably be more fierce because everyone can see what it does for a band.”

Even though previous Guitar Hero games relied almost exclusively on cover versions of most songs, original artists still saw increased song sales from inclusion in Guitar Hero II, released in October 2006 for the Sony PlayStation 2 and in April 2007 for the Microsoft Xbox 360.

A look at Nielsen SoundScan data for a dozen Guitar Hero II songs found that 11 out of 12 had increased sales in 2007, including:

• Cheap Trick’s Surrender nearly tripled from 58,000 digital sales in 2006 to 161,000 in 2007.
• Kiss’ Strutter went from 11,000 to 63,000 sold.
• The Pretenders’ Tattooed Love Boys rose from 5,000 to 16,000.
• Only Danzig’s Mother showed a drop, from 28,000 to 16,000.

“A lot of it is the classic guitar-type rock stuff form the Skynyrds to the new big monster bands like Queens of the Stone Age and Wolfmother,” says Mike Davis of Universal Music (Bon Jovi, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Who). “Old and new with the classic rock sound seems to be the stuff that is doing super well. … It’s a pretty hot subject these days.”

Rich Williams, guitarist for the classic rock band Kansas, says that after the release of Guitar Hero II, which included the band’s song Carry On Wayward Son, “the front row of almost every show we did was filled with young teenagers. It’s all due to that. It’s brought us a whole new fan base.”

Digital sales of the song rose from 119,000 in 2006 to 297,000 in 2007. “It’s been a positive influence for us,” he says. “It brought a younger crowd to us that otherwise might not have come in.”

The Guitar Hero effect has been sharpened in Guitar Hero III, which features original artist recordings for more than three-fourths of the songs. Every GH III song tracked by Nielsen SoundScan (62 of the 70) saw an increase in digital sales during the post-holiday week, and nearly all saw boosts immediately after the game’s October release.

“It’s such a dark time for the record business. This is one of the bits of truly great news we’ve seen in a long time,” says Marc Reiter of Q Prime management, whose clients Metallica, Muse and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have songs in the game.

Sales of Metallica’s One increased from just more than 2,000 weekly before GH III’s release to more than 6,000 in the weeks afterward and spiked at 27,605 in the post-holiday week. Muse and the Chili Peppers saw similar but more modest hikes in sales of Knights of Cydonia and Suck My Kiss.

“Those tracks didn’t have any (other) activity surrounding them at the time,” Reiter says. ” I really do believe we have only begun to scratch the surface of the impact (video games) can have on artists and instrument sales.”
By Mike Snider

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