 This is Ross Miller with The Verge, and this is the future of Guitar Hero. The acclaimed plastic instrument franchise of last generation is back with Guitar Hero Live from the developer behind the more experimental DJ Hero. We had a chance to spend some time with an early preview build of the game, set to launch this October. And while it's still a Guitar Hero game through and through, there are some pretty interesting changes we're talking about. Let's start with the guitar itself, which is probably the most obvious change. It feels familiar enough, as guitars are wont to do. There's a neck, a body, whammy bar, and a clicky thing to pluck in rhythm. Where Guitar Hero Live changes things, it's what's on the neck. Instead of the traditional five large buttons in a row, Guitar Hero Live lays it out in a 3x2 grid. To put in a guitar parlance, it's like playing with two strings and three frets. If you're used to the older Guitar Hero or Rock Band games, there's going to be a bit of a learning curve here. Sure, there's less traveling for your hand and you don't have to use your pinky as much, and it takes a few songs to adjust to the new style, but it quickly becomes familiar. The chords, so to speak, do feel more like chords, but it took us several songs to learn just how to read the new on-screen highways. There's now just three such highways instead of five, but you now need to keep an eye out for three icons representing the top row of buttons, the bottom row of buttons, or sometimes both. Eventually, it just feels like the same old Guitar Hero. You listen to the music, you see the notes, and you finger the controller accordingly. Guitar Hero Live has two modes. There's the more traditional mode, now played from a first-person, live-action, on-stage point of view thing. And then there's Guitar Hero TV, which is probably the biggest change here. Guitar Hero TV is so important to the game that there's even a dedicated button on the controller itself. Guitar Hero TV is a series of 24-hour music video channels. Yep, kinda like the old MTV, and you can kinda jump into whichever one whenever you want to play. It's not something played local, you're actually jumping into a live channel and playing along with other people in real time around the world. Scores and rankings are shown to the left of the highway over the music video, and again, you can kinda jump in and out anytime, and if you stop playing entirely, all the kind of on-screen graphics go away, and you're basically just left with a music video network. While Guitar Hero TV will offer free channels, there will be so-called premium channels that you can unlock either through beating challenges or paying real cash. Guitar Hero Live's reps tell us you'll be able to play most if not all content without having to pay, but if you want to expedite your in-game collection, there will be an option to buy. That all being said, the business model of Guitar Hero Live, like the rest of the game itself, is still deep in development. Not for much longer, though, Guitar Hero Live is coming out October 20th to most major consoles and even select mobile devices.