Guitar Hero: World Tour on stage debut
by Xav de Matos 
{ May 29th 2008 at 11:00AM }
At Wall Street Journal's D6 All Things Digital event yesterday, Activision CEO Robert Kotick took the opprotunity to showoff Guitar Hero: World Tour. In the midst of introducing the upcoming game Kotick started to describe World Tour as, "the first time you'll have multiple instruments," before D6 co-host Kara Swisher quickly shot back "it's called Rock Band I think," which sent the crowd into a frenzy of laughter.
Whether Kotick meant it was the first time Guitar Hero would have the peripherals or if he was trying to pull a fast one on an audience he expected to have limited gaming knowledge is unknown. What we do know is the people playing the game for the demo, including skateboarder Tony Hawk, could not look more bored.
Come on people. You're rocking out! A little passion please.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
gotoman00 @ May 29th 2008 11:11AM
what a pathetic display of hand clapping and feigned interest
Matthew @ May 29th 2008 11:24AM
Unless the drummer was playing on Easy or even medium, I didn't any type of notes indicating a bass drum was being played. That coupled with the fact there's no color on the pedal make me believe it's useless.
Also, the cymbal notes are laid in between snare and tom notes. That won't be confusing at all.
GH drums appear to be equalling...fail.
Deezul @ May 29th 2008 11:34AM
They showed WAY to much of the people playing and little of the actual screen. I noticed that as well - where was the bass pedal notification? I'll continue to enjoy RB thank you very much.
The only reason I might consider this is if Activision is smart and comes out with a version of just the game and drum kit. I have two GH guitars, and three USB microphones. RB game + drum kit is only $30 cheaper than the entire kit, so maybe Activision will price their drum kit cheaper than RB.
MDJ2010 @ May 29th 2008 11:24AM
urgghhhhh, why get people on the guitars who suck for a demonstration aswell? All you hear is a load of clunky missed notes. Well I'm getting Rock Band today and I can guarantee I'll be having more fun than this bunch!!!!
monkeymonkeymonkey @ May 29th 2008 11:40AM
What a bunch of assclowns. I love how the interviewer says "Rock Band". LOL.
Was that Tony Hawk on the guitar? Looks like him.
Bryan T @ May 29th 2008 12:59PM
lol, I def. thought that was Tony Hawk
Treima @ May 29th 2008 1:32PM
I own both Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band. I prefer to play Rock Band for the drums and vocals, but I noticed that the guitar seems a bit lacking in terms of difficulty and the RB guitar's stiff strummer really turned me off to it. I use my GH guitar whenever possible, and I start to miss GH when I play RB for extended periods.
That said, I'll probably be getting GH:WT as soon as I get some storage space for the plastic decoy instruments I currently possess.
CyberKnight @ May 29th 2008 8:38PM
If you have a stiff strum bar on the guitar, get it replaced. Mine had the same problem, it was murder on the long streams of notes. It wasn't until a friend of mine got a set and I found his was so much easier to play that I realized there must be something wrong with mine.
One replacement later, and my Rock Band guitar works great.
Rickmanx @ May 29th 2008 11:49AM
Its pretty obvious that this site, including the host, has a major bias towards Rock Band.
Personally I love Rock Band as a 4 player game to rock out with friends, and the music actually sounds a little better as far as quality, but there are a few things I think Guitar Hero 3 does better.
1. Graphics are better - They chose not to go with that stupid "haze" look so you actually can see the venues, and some are amazing.
2. Note Charts are more challenging and fun to play. I can't believe how many times I've switched from one GH3 to the other (playing hard on both) and thought Rock Band's charts were, with the exception of a few songs, "stupidly easy".
3. Guitar Hero's community website totally destroys Rock Band's. The amount of data posted about the songs played, note accuracy, and campaign data totally blows away the stupid amount of cash earned per player in the other.
Add on now that Guitar Hero World Tour will have all the instuments, ability to make your own tracks, exclusive bands like Van Halen, The Eagles, and others, and Battle of the Bands, this game might actually be pretty good, even if the idea is a bit of a copy cat.
So I have a feeling I'll end up owning both.
Matthew @ May 29th 2008 12:05PM
I like both as well, though as a former drummer I wanted RB one reason: drums. The new drums for GH make look spiffy and new, but I think it'll bring disappointment.
I was playing GH3 last night and though it's well known and everyone knows GH is harder than RB I prefer RB's Hard myself. GH3 is challenging only because it tries to hard for the sake of being hard.
Xav de Matos @ May 29th 2008 12:32PM
I wouldn't say we're biased about either. We have no stick in either game but we're frustrated with how Guitar Hero is trending.
Also, how can we not point out the comment made during this conference. If we ignored it then we'd be labeled as Guitar Hero biased.
We love games, we ain't down for kissing one ass over another and we hope our readers understand that.
Glenn @ May 29th 2008 1:20PM
"Add on now that Guitar Hero World Tour will have all the instuments, ability to make your own tracks, exclusive bands like Van Halen, The Eagles, and others, and Battle of the Bands, this game might actually be pretty good, even if the idea is a bit of a copy cat."
No where has it been said that these bands are exclusive to GHWT. In the press release given by Activision, it was said that they will be in GHWT. Nowhere in official press releases has there been any mention of these bands signing exclusive agreements.
Patton @ May 29th 2008 12:11PM
There's only one thing I can say about this video: douchechill.
Corey @ May 29th 2008 12:17PM
Poor Tony Hawk. He was once the untouchable king of skateboarding games until Skate came out. Now that he doesn't have a new installment coming out this year, he has to help promote this Rock Band-alike.
tim @ May 29th 2008 12:30PM
honestly there just doesn't look like there is anything innovative about this. GH is playing catch-up to Rock Band, which makes me believe RB2 will do something to further separate itself as the better game. They've already destroyed GH in the DLC area, as well as the graphics, AND customer support when it comes to crappy instruments (both are to blame for this).
also, anyone playing rock band recently has noticed that they've stepped up their game on the difficulty w/ all of the DLC. it was a reasonable gripe at first, but they've responded quite well. besides, rock band is about a group of people having fun playing good songs together, not about being locked in your room by yourself trying to master Dragonforce songs to post on youtube.
Kev (gamertag: ksiddique) @ May 30th 2008 3:52PM
Best comment of the day!
Digital Limit @ May 29th 2008 12:35PM
That was hard to watch. More ingame footage, please.
CosmicNeurotica @ May 29th 2008 12:43PM
Wow, can you get more pathetic than this video?
I was kind of looking forward to the new Guitar Hero with the new instruments, but by looking at the actual game (looks worse than GH3), and Activision CEO's plain ignorance, I was the one who was ignorant to ever think they could do something better than the masters of Harmonix, and yes.. it IS called Rock Band and will stay that way as far as I'm concerned.
evilJaze @ May 29th 2008 12:47PM
I think the author was confusing boredom with concentration. That's pretty much how everyone I know looks when trying to play either GH or RB. Unless you're Ace Frehley, you won't have the skills necessary to breeze through a track and smile and wave at the same time.
UNSCleric @ May 29th 2008 2:16PM
GH looks like trash. I went back and played GH3 for the first time in months a couple nights ago, and the note charts are just retarded and not fun at all.
Jack @ May 29th 2008 3:44PM
YAY! They used the XBOX 360 version. =D
c4v3man @ May 29th 2008 3:55PM
Even the XBOX 360 dashboard is more fun than this game...
http://xbox.joystiq.com/2008/04/20/google-employees-rock-out-to-360-dashboard/
Just kidding...
Ian Murray @ May 29th 2008 4:08PM
Wow.
Just wow.
This was possibly the most flaccid excuse for a game demonstration I've ever seen. Even if they got people who could play flawlessly, it still would look like utter copycat trash.
And there's plenty to be said for difficulty. Making a song hard for the sake of having it be hard is ignorant. Make it FEEL like you're actually playing the song, and that's where your paydirt lies.