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Activision offers 'Guitar Hero Live' refunds after songs vanish
Activision appears to be learning a hard lesson about the risks of tying a music game to a subscription service. The publisher has launched a "voluntary refund program" for Americans who can prove they bought Guitar Hero Live between December 1st, 2017 and January 1st, 2019. You can make a claim until May 1st, 2019. While Activision didn't say why it was offering refunds, it's likely tied to the end of the game's Guitar Hero TV streaming music service. The company shut down GHL's streaming component at the end of 2018, shrinking the song library from 484 songs to the 42 tracks on the disc -- you suddenly weren't getting what you paid for.
The 'DJ Hero' and 'Guitar Hero Live' team is joining Ubisoft
Freestyle Games, known for its work on Guitar Hero Live and DJ Hero under publisher Activision, has a new home. The team has joined Ubisoft and will be renamed to Ubisoft Leamington -- based on its location in the UK. A post on UbiBlog says that the studio will collaborate with Ubisoft Reflections, whose past projects include Assassin's Creed: Syndicate and last year's Watch Dogs 2, in addition to Ubisoft's worldwide teams on their AAA projects.
Def Leppard uses 'Guitar Hero Live' to debut new music video
Def Leppard is still crankin' it to 11 in 2016, on the heels of a new self-titled album released in October. To debut its latest music video, though, the band is taking a rather interesting approach. The video for the track "Dangerous" will first appear in the game Guitar Hero Live as a playable track. If you missed the revival of Guitar Hero last year, the latest installment pairs gameplay with "live" visuals of artists playing gigs. It includes everyone from Carrie Underwood to Avenged Sevenfold.
'Rock Band 4' and 'Guitar Hero Live' are basically board games
The puppies always get excited when I open the hall closet. As the heavy, wooden door slides open with a twist and a pop, my two tiny dogs run over, tails wagging, because opening that closet means one of three things: The pups are going for a walk, I need to sweep, or it's time to play Rock Band 4. My boyfriend and I store the plastic guitars in that closet, and as I slide them out, brushing past jacket sleeves and cardboard boxes, even the puppies understand what's going on. We're having a party.
Apple TV supports 'Guitar Hero Live,' 'Disney Infinity' via Bluetooth
Guitar Hero Live, Skylanders SuperChargers and Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions are on their way to Apple TV, iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch in the fall. Additionally, Disney Infinity 3.0 is heading to Apple TV by the end of the year. But that's the old news. Here's the new, technical bit: Apple TV supports MFi-based gamepads, rather than non-certified Bluetooth options, as outlined in its description. MFi is a licensing program for devices that connect to Apple products and you can read more about it right here. Basically though, Star Wars fans and wannabe rock stars can rest easy. The newly designed, Bluetooth Guitar Hero Live instruments will work across all Apple devices, including Apple TV. Disney Infinity 3.0 will get a wireless Bluetooth base just for Apple TV (note that the console version of that base is wired, sometimes leading to terrible accidents). Skylanders SuperChargers uses Bluetooth devices and these will work with Apple TV as well, according to Activision.
'Guitar Hero Live' is a karaoke simulator
This October, prepare to bring the house down with wild guitar riffs and your mad karaoke skills in Guitar Hero Live. That's right, it's official: Guitar Hero Live brings singing back to the franchise, alongside the new guitar and all of the fresh online features, challenges and songs available in Guitar Hero TV. A behind-the-scenes video posted just before Gamescom kicks off this week in Cologne, Germany, provides an overview of online features in Guitar Hero Live and drops the mic on singing in the game.
The first bands in 'Guitar Hero Live' include Alt-J, Pantera, Skrillex
The star of Guitar Hero Live is its new controller, a guitar with six buttons instead of the classic five. The additional button allows developers to include more genres of music in the game, including Skrillex's "Bangarang," Fall Out Boy's "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark" and The Lumineers' "Ho Hey." These artists and 10 others were announced alongside Guitar Hero Live, but now Activision and FreeStyleGames have revealed their specific songs, plus 11 new artists and tracks. The new list includes Pantera's "Cowboys from Hell," Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law," Sleigh Bells' "Bitter Rivals" and Alt-J's "Left Hand Free." When we spoke to Guitar Hero Live Senior Producer Tim Dunn last week, he noted that the new six-button guitar expands the franchise's musical reach. "The new button layout helped us get more gameplay out of different genres of music," he said. See the current track lineup below, as provided by Activision.
A close look at the new, yet familiar guitar in 'Guitar Hero Live'
Tim Dunn and Nate Coppard are on a mission to rewire your brain. They're respectively the senior producer and senior designer behind Guitar Hero Live's new six-button guitar, and while neurological change is not their direct goal, it's a side effect they seem to relish. The new guitar has two rows of three buttons each, stacked on top of each other at the end of the neck -- this not only adds an extra button to the series, but it allows for fresh challenges. "It's not something people will be familiar with," Dunn says, glancing down at the Guitar Hero Live guitar in his hands. He taps some of the buttons. "It's a new thing." Seated next to Dunn, Coopard adds, "We've had a lot of people saying they can feel their brains kind of adjusting and kind of rewiring to the new way of playing it as they play through the songs, and then gradually getting to grips with how the difficulty ramps up as you jump around between the two layers."
'Guitar Hero' gets born again with a new look and a new controller
Guitar Hero has no business being relevant in 2015. Ten years is an eternity for video games, especially so for games tied so closely to specific technology like Harmonix's revolutionary PlayStation 2 game was to its inner-rock-star-summoning controller when it came out. A decade on from that original, and five years on from the last release in the series, Guitar Hero is an icon, but it also feels like a relic, a work hopelessly locked in its era. A 10-year anniversary reissue, maybe with some bonus tracks thrown in, seems like the best-case scenario for Guitar Hero coming back to life in 2015, a dignified archive for the nostalgic. FreeStyleGames has done so much more with its new game Guitar Hero Live. The studio has made a game that feels deeply modern, relevant, wholly distinct from Rock Band and somehow still rooted in tradition. It's all thanks to a new controller and a wildly different look for the series' debut on PS4, Xbox One and Wii U.
Resurrecting 'Guitar Hero' through live rock and robots
Guitar Hero Live is trying to pull off one of the most difficult acts in rock and roll: the return to relevance. Not just a reunion tour feeding off nostalgic fans looking to recapture the good, old days of 2005, but a bona fide resurrection. After a five-year hiatus for the series, FreeStyleGames has taken over. It hopes to bring the rock star simulator back to the prominence that made Guitar Hero 3 the first game to break $1 billion in sales. Its first step: redesigning the iconic guitar, trading its five primary-colored buttons for six black and white keys that mimic actual chord fingerings, but that's not its primary gambit. Chasing the rock star fantasy that the old games sold even further, this fall's Guitar Hero Live places you on a real stage with a real band and audience, all filmed from a first-person perspective.
