Aerosmith Cements Guitar Hero Status

Activision has announced that it is taking the Guitar Hero series in a new direction with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith.

In a nutshell, it does what it says on the tin. The game will take players through the 30 year career of the legendary rock band, dropping them in key venues in the band's history as they strap on the guitar of Joe Perry or Tom Hamilton' bass.

The game will feature around 30 tracks, including some from bands that have played with or inspired Aerosmith.

To go with the announcement, Activision is releasing Dream On for Guitar Hero III as a freebie on Xbox Live and PSN. February 16th - 18th are the dates given, although it's unclear whether this will be worldwide.

“Having a game built around Aerosmith has been a huge honor and really a great experience for us”, said Joe Perry, Aerosmith's guitarist. “We’ve put a lot of ideas into the game so that fans can have fun interacting with our music, getting inside our body of work and learning about the band’s history.”

Rubber-lipped frontman Steven Tyler also chimed in, saying, “Any band that can go from Don’t Want to Miss A Thing (Aerosmith’s #1 smash hit) to the ass-kicking Sweet Emotion to the cheekiness of Love in an Elevator, to the classic ballad Dream On shows why Activision chose us to headline this game based on the diversity of the Aerosmith catalogue. Not only is songwriting a bitch, but then it goes and has puppies.”

Perry also feels that the game is something of an epic endeavour, saying, “On a larger scale, it’s cool for us to be pioneers helping to rebuild the music industry through a format like video games. It’s great for rock since the record companies are struggling to make sense of how things are changing. Fans want to get and experience music in new formats-and there are going to be some of them who will play the game, then pick up the guitar for real and start bands. It’s what’s happening now, and it’s only going to build more momentum in the future. It’s a massive change for the music business.”

As far as Activision goes, it feels that the new direction could drive the series forward. "It's just a completely new way to interact with this music and with Aerosmith, and we think there's more opportunity to do that in the future”, said Kai Huang, head of RedOctane^†. Guitar Hero: Guns 'n' Roses, maybe?

For added authenticity, developers have spent some time doing motion capture with the band.

Huang has said that Activision is undecided on whether it will produce a special peripheral for the game.

Neversoft – which took over from Harmonix when it went to work on rival Rock Band – is working on versions of the game for the Xbox 360 and PS3, while Vicarious Visions is working on a Wii version and Budcat is working on the game for the PS2.

The game is set for release this summer.

^{†Source: Reuters}