‘Real guitar’ game puts pressure on Guitar Hero

A new US developer has decloaked at GDC, revealing a new game it thinks can revitalise the competitive mass market music game genre.

Seven45 Studios is a Boston-based team of former LucasArts, Pandemic, Atari and Vivendi vets working on their first game, Power Gig.

But as a subsidiary of music instrument firm First Act – which supplies 90 per cent of the mass market instrument sector in America via the likes of CostCo, Best Buy, Target and others – the firm is building a game that doesn’t use a plastic instrument, but a real guitar.

The genuine six-string peripheral is a hybrid controller and instrument. It features strings and real strumming with a plectrum as opposed to flicking a plastic strum bar. It has a special dampener which, when depressed, turns off the game controller elements and allows players to plug the guitar into an amp.

It’s a complex piece of kit that is designed to provide a hefty shot in the arm for an industry category which has famously slumped as the guitar controllers used in the likes of Guitar Hero and Rock Band hit saturation point in the market.

"This is what we think the consumer has been screaming for in the video game business," VP of marketing Jeff Walker told Develop.

"With our hardware expertise we are in a great position to go into a genre that is on the decline, kick it in the ass and turn it around."

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