Topic: Activision Announces Guitar Hero Live for Wii U

[Shaymin]

Bring on the groupies and prepare to rock the night away once more.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/40078/activision-announces-guitar-hero-live-for-wii-u

After a five-year hiatus, Guitar Hero will make its return this fall and the Wii U will get to jam along.

Guitar Hero Live will launch this fall for $99.99 with a new guitar that has two rows of buttons in black and white instead of the traditional five-button setup. Unfortunately, this new controller prevents old controllers, as well as old songs and DLC, from being used. The hook for Guitar Hero Live is that you play in the first-person with an FMV band and audience around you. If you play poorly, your bandmates will get angry and the crowd will riot. If you play well, you'll, hopefully, feel like a rock star.

The game is being developed by the Activision-owned company Freestyle Games, who previously worked on the DJ Hero franchise and the Wii U launch title Sing Party. The song list will include bands such as The Black Keys, Fall Out Boy, The Killers, The Rolling Stones, Skrillex, and Green Day. Full details on songs will be on the way in the future. Word is that Guitar Hero Live will have a large presence at E3 2015.

[ClexYoshi]

let us hope Activision learned their lesson here... although if I wer ethem, this would NOT be how I went about relaunching the series.

I'd get the GUitars for the various skews out there, but I would make the game itself freemium with two modes; a Jukebox mode where you dump a dollar and get access to a song for a few sets before you have to plunk down money again... and then the other mode be where you just buy the songs wholesale in packs for unlimited play. of course, there'd be way to earn free plays in the jukebox that are on timers and such, but yeah. I dunno if I'd want to try a business model like that when you're including a full retail game in with the guitar.

[broodwars]

And thus, Nintendo's big Fall 2015 title has been announced.  :

[Ian Sane]

When the new Rock Band was announced I joked about Activision releasing a new Guitar Hero and killing the whole golden goose again.  ....and here we are.

Rock Band lets you use your old DLC while Guitar Hero isn't even going to let you use your old controllers.  Yep, this is the Activision one alright.  Just the sheer fact that Activision threw their hat in the music game ring again has killed any interest I had in this.

[Mythtendo]

Just the sheer fact that Activision threw their hat in the music game ring again has killed any interest I had in this.

"Studio A is making a crappy movie, so i'm not gonna watch any movies", that is basically your logic.


More games is never a bad thing, even if you are not interested in it.

[leahsdad]

Just the sheer fact that Activision threw their hat in the music game ring again has killed any interest I had in this.

"Studio A is making a crappy movie, so i'm not gonna watch any movies", that is basically your logic.


More games is never a bad thing, even if you are not interested in it.

I never played the DJ Hero games, but Sing Party was pretty darn good with (unfortunately) some severely wasted potential.   It wasn't accurate with scoring, but man, it was FUN.   It was actually a group karaoke game where instead of just one schmoe getting up and singing, everyone (even if you didn't have the mic) was participating and having fun.  I only busted it out for maybe 3 or 4 parties, but they were super popular among everyone when we played.  And the production values were both slick and creative--  imagine if the production designer on those You Don't Know Jack games were put to work on a music game.

But no, this guitar hero game does sound pretty stupid.

[Soren]

A 3rd party game whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

[NWR_insanolord]

I said earlier that this whole Rock Band/Guitar Hero thing is reminding me of the end of Dr. Strangelove. They killed each other via mutually assured destruction, and now the fallout's clear, they're out of the underground bunkers, and they're going right back to doing the same thing all over again.

[Khushrenada]

I always knew we'd meet again some sunny day.

[broodwars]

I said earlier that this whole Rock Band/Guitar Hero thing is reminding me of the end of Dr. Strangelove. They killed each other via mutually assured destruction, and now the fallout's clear, they're out of the underground bunkers, and they're going right back to doing the same thing all over again.

In a less violent analogy...

[Mop it up]

So they're trying this again? We'll see how long it takes them to run it into the ground this time.

[Jonnyboy117]

This looks neat, and the new guitar is a little more realistic, but I'll have a hard time taking this over Rock Band with all my legacy DLC (even though I'll have to buy a damn Xbox One to get access to it).

[Fatty The Hutt]

In depth article at Polygon details all the modes and gives some hands-on impressions. Looks very impressive overall even if some aspects seem a bit gimmicky (like the first-person view of the live-action-video crowd that "reacts" to how well you play).
GHTV looks very interesting, potentially excellent.
Game can be played on pretty much anything, including smartphones and tablets, with no need to re-buy for those functionalities. That is impressive to me.

[nickmitch]

I'm intrigued.  Looks like they're trying to make a new, different, and better experience.

But, like Ian said, Activision may run this into the ground.  That would render yet another investment in DLC and plastic crap worthless.

[Fatty The Hutt]

It seems like, from that Polygon article, that the GHTV feature is where they will try to monetize this beyond your initial purchase. So we will see how that shakes out before declaring this game worthwhile. Hopefully they will reveal all at E3 but possibly not.

I can see them making GHTV essentially free for awhile then introducing a premium version or new channels you have to pay for. Something like that. It would replace "DLC" songs since you don't download anything but it would keep the bucks rolling in. As long as the pricing scheme isn't outrageous, I can see this being worthwhile. But, this is the publisher of Skylanders, so...

[Fatty The Hutt]

I also wonder whether the "full" experience will come to Wii U or if in will be borked somehow.