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To celebrate Fourth of July, and perhaps move a few more Guitar Hero IIIs, Activision is giving away the Top Gun Anthem song via the Playstation Store and Xbox Live starting this Thursday.
Anthem is the guitar-heavy song from Top Gun, not to be confused with Kenny Loggins's Danger Zone. Unfortunately the free DLC won't include a heavy metal fro or aluminum parachute pants.
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activision
You may remember the class action lawsuit filed against Activision this past November on behalf of owners of the flawed, mono-only version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. The lawsuit, submitted by Samuel Livingston of California, sought "actual damages, individual restitution, equitable relief, civil penalties, costs and expenses of litigation, including attorney's fees, and all further relief available." Well now Activision and Livingston have settled out of court, and Livingston made millions! MILLIONS! Okay, so he didn't get millions. What he, and every other owner of the defective version of the game got, was an extension on the replacement program until August 2008, and a free faceplate - the same faceplate they were already sending out anyway. Oh, and Activision promises not to make the faulty version of the game anymore. Wow. Next time Sam? Just fill out the damn form.
Activision settles mono sound suit [GameSpot]
controversy
Guitar Hero tournies have been floating around bars since the game's inception, and the trend has only grown since. But not everyone is so happy about the popularity of drunks pretending to be rockstars on stage—namely musicians. And while these comments were just from one guy who liked to jam at one bar, we have a feeling that he speaks for a multitude of others.
Yea, it's fun. Yea, it's cool and difficult to master (nowhere near on the level of a real musical instrument), and yea it's an escape from your miserable existance [sic] but it's not something I want to see LIVE ONSTAGE in a venue that should have a REAL musician Performing! Anyone who has even the slightest bit of culture and refinement would agree. GUITAR HERO belongs in the home, at house parties or in a Frathouse basement but it DOES NOT BELONG AT HUMPY'S GREAT ALASKAN ALEHOUSE, REPLACING OPEN MIC MONDAYS!!!!!Oh, and Humpy's actually exists, by the way. This only gets better. More »
announcements
Activision is having a banner year, and they've got the NPD data to prove it. The company issued a press release this morning to announce that NPD Group data has placed them as the top U.S. console and handheld publisher from January to November of 2007, increasing its market share to a record 16.8% in the eleven month period, up 7.9% from the year before. "We continue to see strong consumer response to our wholly owned and internally developed titles — Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare," said Robert Kotick, Chairman and CEO, Activision, Inc. "We are well positioned to continue our leadership position through the remainder of the year and are on track to delivering another record year of revenue growth and the most profitable year in our history."Now that Activision has a larger market share than EA, how long before we get to start calling them an evil empire? Let me know, okay? I've got some great t-shirt ideas. More »
Those of you hunting for official wireless guitar controllers from Activision to supplement their Guitar Hero III experience can stop looking, because they aren't out yet. I was expecting them to be out on shelves with the game itself, but Activision has announced that wireless controllers for all four console versions will be heading to retail outlets in early 2008. This is excellent news for owners of the PS3 and Wii versions of the game, who at this point have to buy additional copies of the full package in order to get an extra wireless guitar, which works on paper - specifically Activision sales papers - but in execution kind of hurts players' tender wallets. Probably for the best that I wasn't able to find one, as I already have four fake guitars cluttering up my living room as it is. What I need is a guitar controller rack to display my instruments of destruction.
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It has begun. Prepare to argue over song value in the comments section as two new Guitar Hero III song packs hit Xbox Live early this morning. The Foo Fighters Pack contains "The Pretender", "All My Life", and "This Is A Call", while the Velvet Revolver Pack consists of "She Builds Quick Machines", "Slither", and "Messages". All of the songs carry the "as performed by" label, which means that they are crafty approximations of said songs and not original recordings the original songs (pardon my initial confusion). Both packs carry the same old price tag of 500 Microsoft Points as piece as well. As Luke so succinctly put it, just as shitty as Guitar Hero II's DLC. Similar packs will hopefully be showing up soon on the PlayStation 3 version, only with a real money value attached to them, which will hurt more.
In Game Content: Guitar Hero III [Xbox Live's Major Nelson]
control freak
Forums on GameSpot and the official Guitar Hero site are getting hit with a number of complaints about faulty Guitar Hero III controllers. Apparently some of the buttons will flake out over time with some controllers. It seems that a lot of gamers suspect that the guitar's detachable neck is to blame.
There's a lot of speculation so far, but no official word from Activision or RedOctane, which is unfortunate. I contacted the company this morning for a comment and they've yet to get back to me. We'll update or do another post once we hear some sort of official word. What about you, have you had any problems? The 360 I demoed with was fine and the Wii guitar had a momentary problem but seems fine again.
Guitar Hero III: Problems with the Detachable Neck [Law of the Game]
I know that Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock is already out in stores, but I thought it might be interesting to check out the Wii version for those who haven't decided which system to buy the game for yet. I'll be unboxing and playing for about 30 minutes or so. Hit the jump to comment.
K, show's over folks. Thanks for watching and commenting.
guitar freaks
activision
One of our tipsters, who happens to work at national music retailer Guitar Center and will remain anonymous, let us know recently that his employer will be one of the many retailers stocking Activision's fake guitar playing game this holiday season. It appears to be the megastore's first attempt at selling video games, understandably, but, based on the pics we've been sent of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock arriving at the stock room, they're not just dabbling—they're buying in big amounts. The game also gets the front page treatment on GuitarCenter.com, with only the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 versions appearing to be stocked.
It looks like an interesting experiment for Guitar Center, one that might have great crossover potential in-store. It will also surely push the number of times the question "Why don't they just play a real guitar?" is asked well into the billions.
In a rare moment of synergy between the two competitors, EA and Activision have managed to bring the delicious combination of fast cars and rock and roll together on Xbox Live today, as demos for both Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and Need for Speed ProStreet are both now available for your tiny dose of gaming pleasure. The GHII demo is a modest 545 MB while the racer clocks in at 655 MB. I'm currently downloading both, so if I any of my posts show up later on with missing images or spelling errors, you can blame one or both of them. Also live today is the European demo for Eternal Sonata, easily the prettiest RPG on the Xbox 360, and the best video game Chopin learning tool in the history of the gaming.
Looks like that leaked Guitar Hero III track list from a couple weeks back might be closer to reality than we thought. While the new press release from Activision doesn't reveal specific song tiers, it does add seventeen new songs, all of which were included on the rumored list. Still the leaked list has seventy songs, while I am only counting fifty-nine in the press release, so I'll leave it to you junior detectives to work out the discrepancies. Seven of the new songs are master tracks from the original artists, including Sonic Youth's 'Cool Thing', Aerosmith's 'Same Old Song and Dance", and The Killers' 'When You Were Young', which will be stuck in my head the rest of the day. Covers include White Zombie's 'Black Sunshine' and 'Devil Went Down To Georgia' made famous by the Charlie Daniels Band. Living in the south, I can tell you right now that if the Devil cover sucks the folks at Activision better start keeping an eye out for suspicious looking pickup trucks in their vicinity. You don't screw around with a song so important that it's projected onto a mountain with lasers every weekend. Hit the jump for the full list, new and old.
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Thanks to Nick McGlynn for the video!
rumor
Rocking out with a big plastic guitar will soon no longer be purely the privilege of the console owning masses, as Aspyr announces an exclusive deal with Activision to develop and publish Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock for the PC and Mac platforms this fall. Not only does this open up the game to a whole new segment of players, but if you've got a nice gaming laptop it essentially makes this the first portable version of Guitar Hero. On top of all of the regular features of the game, Aspyr's version will allow PC and Mac users to battle against each other in online multiplayer, perhaps allowing us to settle the Mac versus PC debate once and for all in glorious rock combat! Bring it on!
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