Expected to launch later today, the Xbox Live music games stores will make browsing the latest releases for games like Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero much more convenient. Rather than having to scroll through an endless list of tracks, you'll be able to search, sort, and preview clips, much in the same way you can from inside each individual game, only without having to actually spin it up.

Games benefitting from the dedicated music stores include Guitar Hero 5, Guitar Hero World Tour, Band Hero, Lips, Lips: Number One Hits, Lego Rock Band, The Beatles: Rock Band, and everything else Rock Band. Sorry, Rock Revolution fans. I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

According to Turner:

When you play, you watch only the Christmas lights, but the audio you hear is from the Wii, so your flubs are broadcast for all to hear (people in cars can tune 99.1 and crank it up as loud as they want.) When we are not playing, a separate version of the program that has the audio from the recorded game plays with the lights as a loop.

And all across America, thousands of suburban dads hold their manhood cheap, and thank God that Ric Turner does not live on their block.

Christmas Lights Display of the Day [The Daily What, thanks Carlos M.]

It's something Red Octane and Activision are thinking about, RO's founder Kai Huang telling the Seattle Times "[a monthly subscription is] definitely one of the things we would love to do. There are a lot of issues around music licensing. Consumers want it; I know I want it. We're trying to make that happen."

Keep trying! And then let Rock Band copy it. Then make it $10 a month to access the whole catalogue, albums and all. Then come get me.

'Guitar Hero' founder excited about future [Seattle Times, via 1UP]

Well, alright, maybe it's a heartwarming story anyway. The jamfest was put together by Pro vs. G.I. Joe, which arranges morale-booster multiplayer competitions between sports stars and service members overseas. Via Xbox Live and a satellite connection, Roethlisberger (git-tar, second from right), and his offensive line - Ramon Foster (guitar, left), Willie Colon (vocals) and Trai Essex (drums, looking like he's playing on easy) took their Guitar Hero 5 skills up against the Army's 336th Military Police Company.

Afterwards, Big Ben orated:

To be able to interact with these guys and enjoy it – and I could see the joy on their face – and get to beat them a little bit in some Rock Band. It's a lot of fun.

Facepalm.

Madden NFL 10 cover boy Troy Polamalu didn't play, but he did show up in grass-covered sniper camouflage (yes, really.) I bet Hines Ward's eyes got real big when he saw that, thinking that getup would be perfect for his next out-of-nowhere blindside hit on Keith Rivers.

NFL Super Bowl Champion Steelers Connect with Soldiers in Iraq for Guitar Hero Competition [Ripten]

After opening his article for The New Republic with a reference to how he and his fellow "smug old children of the 70s" lament the passing influence of the music of their youth, critic David Hajdu discovers a cruel twist. The music games that are so popular on consoles today bring older music to younger audiences, continuing what he considers to be the lamentable tradition of letting an older generation condescend to a younger one that older music is superior music:

For another thing—and this is the main failing of music games, and it is a significant one—they have the insidious effect of glorifying classic rock, a music with an already bloated reputation that is founded on its very bloatedness. In the games' absorption with technical prowess, speed, flash, grandiose show, and fakery, they not only affirm the enduring allure of classic rock to kids and young adults, especially males; they also advance its tyranny. People like me who have kids of video-game-playing age no doubt get many things wrong about these games, and chief among the errors of our age group, I think, is inflated generational pride in the 1970s-style arena rock that Guitar Hero and Rock Band promote to our descendants—kids who might otherwise, and perhaps more appropriately, use their after-school hours to nurture interests in music of their own. The games reassure us that our aftercomers are our heirs. They are male-oriented tools of cultural primogeniture, applications of twenty-first-century technology with a very ancient mission.

The full article will appear in the magazine's December 2 issue.

Pretending [The New Republic]

Dan Rosensweig, CEO of Activision's Guitar Hero business, tells MCV that we will "probably see fewer SKUs" from the publisher in the company's 2010 slate, "but the focus on making the best-selling, most fun to play, best-reviewed games will continue."

"[There will be] more DJ Hero, and the next iterations of Guitar and Band are on the way," Rosensweig says. "But we will see how the market plays out. What you will see is the games will live longer and be more vibrant through DLC."

When you ship over 25 games featuring the Hero brand—Guitar Hero: Metallica, Guitar Hero 5, Guitar Hero: Van Halen, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, Band Hero, DJ Hero—and do so with multiple SKUs of each title—full band kits, guitar only bundles, "Renegade Edition" turntables—and you've reached over 9,000 individual SKUs. Maybe not. My math may be off.

Regardless, it might be difficult not to ship less. Especially when a company like Activision takes a look at the sales of titles like DJ Hero and notices that the PlayStation 2 version only sold 3,300 copies at launch.

Heroic Deeds [MCV via Joystiq]

The application's just been filed; it hasn't been assigned to an examiner yet. Standard trademark filing, covering "Drum Hero" for use in all video games.

Now, just because they filed a trademark doesn't mean this is a project in development. They could just be moving to protect the "Hero" franchise, pairing that word and its synonyms with all sorts of instruments just to be on the safe side. So be on the lookout for Sousaphone Hero, Gutbucket Paladin, and Banjo Myrmidon.

Activision ‘Drumming' Up New Hero Game [PlayStation Lifestyle via Hot Blooded Gaming, thanks Troy A.]

You can no doubt imagine the kind of shambling corpse that'll be trotted out as Guitar Hero 6 (or whatever it ends up being called), and that's not even bringing up the inevitable band-specific, re-release and handheld versions we can no doubt expect from the series.

Call of Duty, though, that's a little more interesting. With this month's Modern Warfare 2 developed by Infinity Ward, next year is a "Treyarch" year, with rumours suggesting the game has moved completely away from the Second World War and will be set in an era with not only more menacing Russians, but better music as well.

As for Spider Man, yeah, he's back, along with a Shrek game that'll no doubt be based on next year's Shrek movie.

Good ol' Activision. They're nothing if not dependable.

Seventeen games to get 76 percent — you try to do better! Dazzling stuff. Great tune, too.

Guitar Hero played on a massive scale using soccer balls [I Heart Chaos]

In reality, this technical demonstration of muscle-computer interfaces, as shown at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, looks far less precise, far more finger straining than playing with traditional plastic. But the work done here by Scott Saponas, a PhD student at the University of Washington, and his peers could provide some of the tactile feedback missing from other motion control options, like Microsoft's Project Natal.

The non-gaming applications are just as fascinating, especially the theoretical car door opening baby carriage. Much better than the personal jet packs and silver jumpsuits I had planned for my own futuristic lifestyle.

Guitar Hero without a guitar [Procrastineering]

If you had any doubts about the ever-growing importance of Facebook to the game industry, look no further than today's Activision announcement, heralding the impressive number of fans the Guitar Hero Facebook page has gathered. It's not about sales. It's not about review scores. It's about people clicking on a little button, and one million (1,084,288 as of this writing) people clicking a button is certainly impressive.

The page is used mainly to request feedback from the Guitar Hero community, asking the community which songs are the hardest to play, what bands they'd like to see, and generally gathering data that could be used to make future updates and versions of the game more tailored to community tastes.

That, or they could just be generating random conversations, though I'd like to think it was the gathering data thing.

So, are you one of the million fans?

Huang, co-founder of Red Octane and parent of the Guitar Hero franchise, went so far as to predict that this generation would be the last to own physical media. In five or 10 years, he said, everything would be digital download-based.

Moore — current head of EA Sports and former overseer of all things Xbox — agreed for the most part. He said that the console model of video games (where you get one complete game on a disc for $60) was a "burning platform." As in, do you stand on a burning platform and face certain death or jump into the waters of digital distribution and face probable death?

Clearly, you want the digital distribution. Right?

Despite Moore and Huang's faith in the future of digital distribution, however, both developers are releasing three to four disc-based games on console a year. Complete with plastic peripherals which cost even more money to manufacture than video game software, mind you.

Huang explained Red Octane's Activision's motivation behind ubiquitous releases as accessibility. "We need to give [our users] channels to access additional content," he said. Not everybody is ready for the DLC revolution, apparently, so they have to keep putting out physical media for the next five to 10 years. Or however long it takes for my physical-media-dependent generation to die out and accept digital everything.

Young had a slightly different take on the digital future. He would, because he develops games almost exclusively for the iPhone like Rolando and Eliminate. Young said episodic content doesn't work because you can't chop a complete game into tiny pieces. Rather, said Young, game makers should be looking at ways to monetize usage. To him, this means making a game that's free to play and then finding ways to trick you into microtransactions. Like shelling out for extremely nerdy clothing for your virtual avatar in a free-to-play role-playing game.

It all comes down to the fact that the video games industry is risk-averse. If console makers believe that the next generation of gamer won't shell out for $60 for a disc that gets scratched up eventually anyway, then we can expect the next iteration of console to not have a disc tray. And when that happens, maybe we can all stop shelling out for plastic guitars and a new copy of what's essentially the same football game every year.

Activision joined an all-star list of brands such as Bud Light, Captain Morgan's and Crunch Gym in paying for product placement, but no one got the treatment like Activision, in which a Guitar Hero showdown acts as a key plot device moving the story forward. Variety talked to Will Kassoy, the senior vice president of publishing for Guitar Hero, who said he "laughed hysterically," when he found out co-stars Vaughn and Favreau wrote "Guitar Hero 5" into the script.

"We thought it was a perfect way to showcase the new game," Kassoy said.

Of course it is. It wasn't a free one though, and one can reasonably assume Vaughn and Favreau's choice of Guitar Hero was more business than artistic tribute, and that's fine. That's how movies of this caliber get made.

It hasn't done too bad, though. "Couples Retreat" pulled in $34 million in its first weekend.

Activision, Universal Couple on 'Hero' [Variety via Joystiq]

Sure, videos get taken down all the time. But search for "Guitar Hero" on YouTube and you get more than 300,000 results. While not all are video directly from the game, it's undeniable that there are many out there showing gameplay, except in a positive light. Most recently there's a guy hundred-percenting eruption in Guitar Hero: Van Halen and using the video to pimp Gamer Grub. Maybe not as embarrassing as the Cobain foofaraw, but I'm sure some lawyer-mans could reason that it's an unauthorized endorsement.

For his part, the video's poster - corporalgregg3 - says:

Yeah, my last account was permanently disabled due to (I think) Activision. Right before my account was shut down, the Kurt Cobain vid was removed due to copyright claim by Activision Games Inc. I will be continuing with this account so whatever f—k it all.

The three videos on his new account are all of Rock Band.

Rock Band 2 The Metal Expert Guitar Bass Drums Gold [720p] [YouTube, thanks Jonathan S.]

It takes a performer like Danny "GuitarHeroPhenom" Johnson, holder of eight marks in the Guinness Book of World Records, to bring it out (and he 100 percents this song just an hour after getting Guitar Hero: Van Halen in the mail.)

But from looking at what the game expects of you if you're going to take on this kind of a solo, it's obvious Guitar Hero: Van Halen's designers studied this kind of video in an attempt to create the same effect.

Video: Van Halen Eruption solo, Guitar Hero Phenom vs. Eddie Van Halen [5frets]

Now, of course I've heard people say that this is wrong; that video games cheapen or damage the experience of learning real music with their plastic peripherals and oversimplification of beats, rhythm and notes. But it seems like even more music games seem to be popping up in response to this criticism – all of which claiming that they are different, that they really are about the music and not about mimicking and button mashing.

Think about it: we've got Timbaland's Beaterator which includes lessons on real music theory in the tutorial, DJ Hero which introduces the concept of an artist who uses other people's music to make an original song and elaborate music studio components in Rock Band and Guitar Hero that put the power of composition directly in your button-mashing fingers. And let us not forget Wii Music and all its lofty educational ambitions.

To tone deaf choir reject like myself, the music game scene isn't just over saturated – it's downright intimidating. Am I supposed to be entertained, educated or indoctrinated? I can hardly decide.

All of this came up today while talking with Carlo Delallana (designer) and Matt Leunig (associate producer) about their game, Jam Sessions 2 – a guitar simulator. I was playing Good Reporter and trying to find out how the game would treat me as a gamer and also as a would-be musician (despite my evident failure in middle school).

I asked about the scoring system and Delallana said the game wouldn't punish me or make the song sound bad for messing up a note. I started to ask about competitive multiplayer and both Leunig and Delallana emphasized that their game was more about making music than trying to be better than the next guy. Finally, I told them about Beaterator's music theory lessons and asked for their take, and Delallana dropped this bomb: "There's a danger in teaching [music] because there's no one way to learn music."

That may be why Jam Sessions 2 is so careful not to punish gamers for messing things up – and why it doesn't really tell you what to do when you get to the music studio to start recording and editing your own tracks. It also may be why I gravitate to it over Beaterator or Rock Band because I don't really know that I want a music game to teach me or judge me on something I feel like I suck at. But is that reaction even worse than me assuming I know how to play the guitar having beaten Killer Queen on Hard?

It comes down to what music games are supposed to be for. If Delallana is right and there's no one way to learn music, then maybe it doesn't matter whether or not DJ Hero has a better track list than Scratch: The Ultimate DJ. But on the other hand, if the game isn't supposed to teach me music – if it's really just an interactive fantasy where I can pretend to be a rock star – maybe all music games are only as good as their set lists.

Either way you look at it, though, there is eventually going to be a music game for everybody if the market for these games keeps expanding like it is. Whether you're a choir reject like me or a Ukulele Hero hold-out, there just might be some comfort in that.

The game arrives in a promotion-copy-only sleeve, with the same advisory stamped on the disc so, no case and no full value for those who think they might flip it for cash or store credit. Recipients also found no evidence of the means to export Van Halen tracks into Guitar Hero 5, probably another resale-defeating mechanism. although who knows if this capability may be enabled once the game is fully on sale in the U.S. Dec. 22.

On the whole, the game appears to be based on Guitar Hero: Metallica, skinned for Van Halen. More pics and details at the link.

Guitar Hero Van Halen Hits Mailboxes, First Setlist Photos [5frets]

Guitar Hero gets three new tracks every Thursday in October, kicking things off on the 5th with the Queens of the Stone Age track pack, consisting of "Mexicola," "Avon," and "How to Handle a Rope." Then we go backwards a bit on the 8th, with "The Stroke," "Everybody Wants You," and "When She Comes To Me" making up the three songs in the Billy Squier track pack. October 15th sees the last of this month's artist-specific packs, with Wolfmother's "Pilgrim," "California Queen," and "Cosmic Egg" making their way onto the Guitar Hero store.

The last two Thursday's of the month are dedicated to Classic Rock and All Hallows' Eve, with tracks from GWAR, The J. Geils Band, The Misfits, Peter Frampton, Triumph, and Marilyn Manson. I'll let you folks figure out which artist belongs to which track pack, or you could just cheat and scroll down.

Guitar Hero Downloadable Content - October 1

Queens Of The Stone Age Track Pack

* "Mexicola"
* "Avon"
* "How to Handle a Rope"

Downloadable Content - October 8

Billy Squier Track Pack

* "The Stroke"
* "Everybody Wants You"
* "When She Comes To Me"

Downloadable Content - October 15

Wolfmother Track Pack

* "Pilgrim"
* "California Queen"
* "Cosmic Egg"

Downloadable Content - October 22

Classic Rock 2 Track Pack

* The J. Geils Band - "Freeze Frame"
* Peter Frampton - "Show Me The Way (Live)"
* Triumph - "Lay It On The Line"

Downloadable Content - October 29

All Hallows' Eve Track Pack

* GWAR - "Gor Gor"
* Marilyn Manson - "Beautiful People"
* The Misfits - "Astro Zombies"

Dirty cheaters.

In an interview with Digital Spy, Kai Huang, president and cofounder of RedOctane, said the studio has "definitely been evaluating Microsoft's Natal technology, along with a lot of other different technologies."

Natal is very interesting because there's so many different things you can do with it, whether it's the motion detecting, maybe sensing how you're playing, or the ability to use it for interactivity purposes and taking advantage of it for party purposes. I think the technology is very exciting. We're evaluating it, and I think it's likely that sometime in the future we'll have those technologies integrated into our games.

Rock Band also is considering Natal, saying they'd look at the technology for inclusion in Rock Band 3.

Guitar Hero May Use Natal Technology [Digital Spy]