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.
Guitar Hero Live
The game serves as a reboot of the "Guitar Hero" franchise, being the first new entry in the series since "" in 2010 and the seventh main installment (sixteenth overall). Activision wanted to bring back "Guitar Hero" for the next generation of video game consoles but wanted the new game to be innovative. FreeStyleGames was given a free rein to revitalize the series by Activision, which led to the development of a new guitar controller featuring a 6 button, 3-fret layout in contrast to the 5 button controller of previous games. FreeStyleGames also wanted to bring a more immersive experience to the player, and developed the main career mode "GH Live" to have the note pattern displayed atop full motion video taken from the perspective of a lead guitarist during a concert, with the crowd and other band members dynamically reacting to the player's performance. FreeStyleGames also wanted to forgo the traditional downloadable content model to provide new songs for the game, and created the "GHTV" mode which encompasses curated playlists in the style of music television channels that are streamed around the clock, allowing them to easily acquire and add new songs. Within "GHTV", songs are presented with the note track overlaid atop their music video or from live concert footage. "GHTV" allows players to pick up and play currently-streamed songs at any time or use money and in-game credits to play any song within the library, forgoing traditional downloadable content. The game was shipped with forty-two songs on disc and 200 songs within the "GHTV" library; New content has been added to "GHTV" on a weekly basis, provided through premium shows that earn players unique rewards.