Rock Band – The Guitar Unveiled

We have been bombarding you with Guitar Hero and Rock Band news for a few months now, and apparently there is no end in site because today while perusing the GameStop newsletter the world was shown some new pics. These new pics are of the much talked about Fender Stratocaster (Harmonix) controller for EA’s Rock Band, and the new images show details that the previous images did not. If you look closely at the neck of the controller, you will notice the two sets of frets at the top correspond to the colors towards the bottom frets. Could these possibly be rhythm and solo sections? We can’t be too sure of that because of the lack of full frontal photos and the lack of gameplay videos, but it is a possible assumption. The guitar will, according to GameStop, allow players to exploit reverb, flange, wah-wah, and delay from the controller.

Personally I am getting more and more psyched as news about both Guitar Hero III with it’s Les Paul and Rock Band with the Fender is released. Time will tell what we can expect to pay at the store for these cool guitar knock-offs, but the general consensus is that they will not be as cheap as the manufacturers are murmuring. GameStop has some speculative pricing listed on their website, and the range varies per console.

With these competing music simulation games vying for gamers’ money, I am curious about what is on the horizon for this genre. Maybe “Maestro” – where you must conduct Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen” or “The Symphony”, where you compete for first-chair cello or violin. I imagine that what is left of the Stradivarius family would be happy to produce a wireless string-instrument for the game – just think how much that controller would cost!