The latest issue of Stuff Magazine gives us some more information for Guitar Hero World Tour in the form of new songs and characters.

Stuff confirms some songs and artists we already knew about, so we’re just going to cut down the info and share with you here what we didn’t know previously.

The newly announced songs are;

Steve Miller Band - “The Joker”
The Answer - “Never Too Late”
Smashing Pumpkins - “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”
Interpol - “Obstacle 1″
Michael Jackson - “Beat It”
The Doors - “Light My Fire”
Linkin Park - “In The End (If We Have To)”

The magazine also confirms The Beastie Boys (which we alluded to at an earlier date), but does not confirm a song. We have to guess it’s “No Sleep ‘Till Brooklyn” as the guitar solo is sweet.

Now given that Guitar Hero World Tour is getting reviewed in a UK title, should we conclude that the launch date will be the same as North America?  Activision has already mentioned “a multi territory launch of Guitar Hero World Tour“.

Something that amused us was Stuff UK’s timeline of Guitar Hero, especially the “June 2008 - GH:Aerosmith For You Steve Perry Fans” bit.  Joe Perry is the guitarist for Aerosmith, Steve Perry was the vocalist for Journey.

Hey, this gives us a chance to tell Activision that Guitar Hero: Journey needs to happen.  Like, yesterday.

If you’re in the UK, this magazine is on newstands now.  If you’re not in the U.K., find a bigger bookstore/magazine shop to locate a copy.

Related Links:
Console Hero -  Guitar Hero Highlights From Activision’s Investors Conference Call

Back in May, The Cars’ self titled debut album became the second full album available as DLC for Rock Band. It also turns out that it will be available only on Rock Band, at least for a while.

Newsweek has an article up right now where a spokesperson for Rhino Records confirmed that the album ‘The Cars’ is on an exclusivity agreement with the game Rock Band for the time being.

Spokesperson Jason Elzy said;

“The deal we made for The Cars is a full album game download and Rock Band is the only game title out there putting full albums up as downloadable content. Having said this, we would not license the full album out for a similar use; however, we can and will (when opportunity presents itself) license single tracks from this album for other games. Nonetheless, moving forward we will be licensing more full albums from the Warner Music Group Catalog for game download to Harmonix for Rock Band.”

Elzy went on to say that it was only the full album that was affected by the agreement. Singles would still be available for licensing on other games.
I guess this might be news as it’s Guitar Hero or Rock Band related, but I don’t think anyone is suprised by exclusivity agreements being signed.

Read the rest of the article by following the link below.

Source: Newsweek - The Great War of Rock Continues to Rage: Rhino Records Tells Level Up That The Cars’ Debut Album Was a Rock Band Exclusive

Related Links:
Console Hero - The Cars’ Self Titled Debut Album to be Next Rock Band Full Album

Well, likely at least in the form of a DLC.

On the in-store videos at Gamestop across the U.S., they are showing a video of Black Tide’s “Shockwave”. Following the video, the announcer says that you can hear more of Black Tide in Motosport 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour

This will likely be in the form of a DLC as a previous in-store Gamestop video mentioned a Black Tide 3 pack DLC which would be released shortly after Guitar Hero World Tour came out.

The song “Shockwave” is already available as a DLC on Rock Band.

All signs point to yes.

Edit: We may have the song listed here for you shortly…

Starting with the big leak back in June that gave a few details about Guitar Hero World Tour including that Black Label Society guitarist Zakk Wylde would be a playable character. Of course that didn’t mean much as Wylde is also the guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne who we knew would have a song in Guitar Hero World Tour after a previous leak.

Then Game Informer issue #164 had a photo of the Neversoft studios, and it featured posters of Black Sabbath and Guns N’ Roses (both in Guitar Hero III), and a poster of Black Label Society. Now that could just say that Neversoft are fans and that the poster is merely a coincidence, or perhaps that was giving us a heads up on what to expect.

Edit: Someone just let us know that a recent video from showed Guitar Hero World Tour in action with lyrics that match a Black Label Society song. They were unable to locate the video, but if it’s true and you (yes, you reading this) are able to find it, could you please leave a web address in the comments and we will update this post.

Now Black Label Society’s drummer, Craig Nunenmacher, told a reporter during an interview that Black Label Society will have a song in the upcoming Guitar Hero. The song in question we are trying to find out, and will let you know when we do.

The best part: The interviewer is Steve Austin who is doing the interview with a focus on recipes, for a tie-in with a website that features celebrities.

Source: Clarion Ledger - Rocker’s routine features working out, eating right
Related Links:
Console Hero - More Guitar Hero World Tour Playable Characters
Console Hero - Big Guitar Hero World Tour Information

The winners of the ‘Game Critics Best Of E3 08′ were announced and, despite a few inclusions in the nominations, the only music game to win an award was Rock Band 2 - and it was for a 3rd party peripheral.

The Rock Band 2 Ion “Drum Rocker” Set won the award for ‘Best Hardware/Peripheral’.

A full list of the winners is after the break.
Read the rest

Guitar Hero III fans will be able to download a new DLC pack this Thursday featuring artists from the Interscope label.

This newest download for Guitar Hero III will feature songs that were previously downloadable exclusives if you bought the Guitar Hero III Soundtrack, and then only if you had the Xbox 360 version.

This should be welcome news to gamers who didn’t want to buy the soundtrack, or who own a Playstation 3, but wanted the songs to play.

This week’s Guitar Hero III track pack will have the following songs;

AFI - “Carcinogen Crush”
Flyleaf - “Tina”
Marilyn Manson - “Putting Holes In Happiness” (Nick Zinner Remix)

No price point has been mentioned as of yet.

MTV News caught up with Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich on the beach and a reporter asked him about the rumors of a Guitar Hero featuring Metallica songs.

Here’s what he had to say;

“There’s an Aerosmith game out there that’s super successful, and if somebody’s gonna follow that up…we’re talking, and its exciting, and the people at ‘Guitar Hero’ and Activision are rapidly becoming our best new friends in the world. You can put the rest of it together yourself.”

Hmm… The people at ‘Guitar Hero’ and Activision’ are becoming Metallica’s best friends… whatever could that mean? That sounds like a non confirmation, confirmation, to us.

Watch the video over at MTV Multiplayer.

Source: MTV Multiplayer - Lars Ulrich Gets Cagey About Guitar Hero Metallica

The complete Rock Revolution setlist has been leaked to gaming site Kotaku via an anonymous tipster.

There are 41 songs in this setlist (as opposed to the previously ‘confirmed’ 40 songs), many of which are fantastic picks. It’s too bad that they’re all cover versions.

The DS version of Rock Revolution will have 20 of these tracks but only 4 have been confirmed as definately being a part of the DS setlist (we’ve noted the ones we know of by placing an asterisk in front of the songs below).

Keep in mind that this Rock Revolution setlist is not an official setlist confirmed by Konami.

View the complete setlist after the break;
Read the rest

A recent article on Wired went ahead and revealed 2 more songs for the Guitar Hero series, or at least songs that Activision has licensed for use.

The article confirms that Sammy Hagar’s song ‘I Can’t Drive 55′ and the Silversun Pickups’ song ‘Lazy Eye’ should be making an appearance in the Guitar Hero series.

While the article does not specify which Guitar Hero game that either song will be in, we’re going to speculate that this is somehow related to the upcoming Guitar Hero World Tour.

The majority of the Wired article detail how bands are getting more exposure from Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and about some legal reasons why they are now getting more masters and rerecordings from the original artists as opposed to cover songs.

Give it a read, the link is below.

Source: Wired - Guitar Hero, Rock Band and The Rock’n'Roll Money Machine

Activision held their quarterly earning release conference call last week, and while there wasn’t that much news released on the Guitar Hero front, there were a few bits of interest.

They’ve said before, but it really seems that Activision is figuring out how lucrative sales of downloadable content can be.

“Online functionality for certain key titles [is] expected to become a significant component of gameplay for certain platforms for which the company will have continuing performance obligations beyond the sale of the game” they said, with CEO of publishing, Mike Griffith, adding that they would be “more than tripling downloadable song content”.

Activision also restated their intent to really push for the European market with Griffith saying “we’re focused quadrupling our local song content for europe” and “more than doubling our in store kiosk presence”

We’re also wondering how soon other parts of the world might get Guitar Hero World Tour because they also mentioned a “multi territory launch of Guitar Hero World Tour”. While doubtful that this means that countries outside of North America will have the same release date, it gives hope that those across the pond may see the game soon after the initial release.

And our favorite quote from the call;

“Without getting into the product specifics and obviously for competitive reasons, it’s a really strong slate of a combination of new opportunities, new genres…next year there’s a really exciting lineup that should broaden the concept of unleashing your inner rockstar through an even bigger audience”

It’s the mention of ‘new genres’, and a Janco Partners analyst recent talk about even more titles coming in the near future, that excite us.

Source: Activision Investor Relations - Activision Blizzard, Inc. Q1 2009 Earnings Release Conference Call