Guitar Hero
In April 2015, Activision announced a new entry in the series, titled "Guitar Hero Live". The title was developed by Activision's internal studio FreeStyleGames, who previously had worked on the "DJ Hero" spinoff titles. FreeStyleGames were given free rein to reboot the "Guitar Hero" series for next-generation consoles. One of their first innovations was to drop the standard five-button guitar controller, ultimately designing a six-button guitar controller, with two rows of three buttons each, allowing them to mimic actual guitar fingering. "Guitar Hero Live" was released with both a career and an online mode. The career mode used full-motion video taken from the perspective of a lead guitarist underneath the note highway, to create an immersive experience to the player. The online mode, called "GHTV", discarded the previous downloadable content approach and used a music video channel approach to stream playable songs to players, adding new songs to the catalog on a weekly basis. The game was released in October 2015.
Cultural impact of the Guitar Hero series
The series has created a market for products outside of the video games. McFarlane Toys has developed a series of six-inch-tall figurines based on the characters from the game. Brett Ratner, director for "Rush Hour" and "", has stated that he wishes to bring a movie based on "Guitar Hero" to theaters. However, Activision, the publisher of the series, did not approve the idea of a film adaptation.
The popularity of the "Guitar Hero" series has led to the development of several commercial and independent clones. Besides Harmonix' "Rock Band" series, Konami released "Rock Revolution" in 2008 which features drums and guitar (the game does not include vocals) similar to "Guitar Hero World Tour". "PopStar Guitar" for the PlayStation 2 and Wii systems, developed by XS Games, features gameplay similar to the "Guitar Hero" series, but features pop music, as opposed to rock and metal. Digital Praise released a Christian rock-themed guitar-based game called "Guitar Praise" also in 2008. "Guitar Rising", to be published for personal computers by Game Tank by 2009, is based on using a real guitar in order to perfect one's skills. "" is a game promoted by "Rolling Stone" for the Wii that uses two Wii remotes as virtual drumsticks. "Frets on Fire" is an open-source clone of "Guitar Hero" for personal computers that features freely available independent songs and allows users to create their own note tracks. Other games based on Guitar Hero include "Battle of the Bands" and "Ultimate Band". "Guitar Hero" has also influenced other games outside of the music game genre. Tim Schafer credits Harmonix and the first "Guitar Hero" game to help establish his pitching of his heavy metal-inspired game, "Brütal Legend", due to the increase in popularity of metal music from the success of "Guitar Hero". Guitar controllers have been repurposed as controls for an independently developed platform game, "Fret Nice". "Rock of the Dead" for the Wii is based on combining the aspects of "The Typing of the Dead" with using a "Guitar Hero" guitar controller to fend off zombies. A PlayStation Home themed space based on "Guitar Hero", called "Guitar Hero: Backstage", was released on March 26, 2009 in North Americas version, and includes a "Simon says"-like minigame called "Guitar Hero-Master of Rock", themed objects, and videos for the user.