Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: When was Guitar Hero Live first released?
Guitar Hero Live is a music video game developed by FreeStyleGames and published by Activision. It was released for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, Xbox 360, and Xbox One in October 2015 and to iOS devices including Apple TV in November 2015. As with previous games in the series, the goal is to use a special guitar controller to match fret patterns displayed on a scrolling note pattern on screen in time with the music.
"Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s" was initially announced by EGM in January 2007 as "Guitar Hero: 1980s Edition". Orange Lounge Radio claimed that the game would be released in June 2007, based on an Activision announcement, though no other source has cited this announcement. Activision officially revealed the first details of the game May 11, 2007, in addition to changing the game's title to "Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80s". Only a few weeks later, the game name was revised again as "Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s", as official artwork for the game was first released. Nevertheless, the word 'Encore' has been dropped from the title of the European releases.
The series has created a market for products outside of the video games. McFarlane Toys has developed a series of six-inch-tall figurines based on the characters from the game. Brett Ratner, director for "Rush Hour" and "", has stated that he wishes to bring a movie based on "Guitar Hero" to theaters. However, Activision, the publisher of the series, did not approve the idea of a film adaptation.
The popularity of the "Guitar Hero" series has led to the development of several commercial and independent clones. Besides Harmonix' "Rock Band" series, Konami released "Rock Revolution" in 2008 which features drums and guitar (the game does not include vocals) similar to "Guitar Hero World Tour". "PopStar Guitar" for the PlayStation 2 and Wii systems, developed by XS Games, features gameplay similar to the "Guitar Hero" series, but features pop music, as opposed to rock and metal. Digital Praise released a Christian rock-themed guitar-based game called "Guitar Praise" also in 2008. "Guitar Rising", to be published for personal computers by Game Tank by 2009, is based on using a real guitar in order to perfect one's skills. "" is a game promoted by "Rolling Stone" for the Wii that uses two Wii remotes as virtual drumsticks. "Frets on Fire" is an open-source clone of "Guitar Hero" for personal computers that features freely available independent songs and allows users to create their own note tracks. Other games based on Guitar Hero include "Battle of the Bands" and "Ultimate Band". "Guitar Hero" has also influenced other games outside of the music game genre. Tim Schafer credits Harmonix and the first "Guitar Hero" game to help establish his pitching of his heavy metal-inspired game, "Brütal Legend", due to the increase in popularity of metal music from the success of "Guitar Hero". Guitar controllers have been repurposed as controls for an independently developed platform game, "Fret Nice". "Rock of the Dead" for the Wii is based on combining the aspects of "The Typing of the Dead" with using a "Guitar Hero" guitar controller to fend off zombies. A PlayStation Home themed space based on "Guitar Hero", called "Guitar Hero: Backstage", was released on March 26, 2009 in North Americas version, and includes a "Simon says"-like minigame called "Guitar Hero-Master of Rock", themed objects, and videos for the user.
In the game's primary single-player mode, titled GH Live within the game, the player completes songs while experiencing full-motion video taken from the first-person perspective of a band's lead guitarist. The video includes shots of the audience and the band members. As the player performs the songs, the audience responds positively to good performances when few mistakes are made. If the player makes several mistakes in a row, the audience will become critical and start to jeer at the performer.[15] To win back the crowd, the player can either match more notes correctly, or can use collected Hero Power to rapidly regain their interest. Hero Power, replacing Star Power from previous Guitar Hero games, is collected by correctly playing marked series of notes on the track; Hero Power can be accumulated, marked as on-screen guitar picks next to the track, to be used at later times. The player can release Hero Power for a limited time by either tilting the guitar controller upward or hitting a special button on the controller.[16]
The song "Stellar" is featured in the video game "Guitar Hero". It also was included as a part of a 3-song pack via Xbox Live for the Xbox 360 version of "Guitar Hero II" on April 11, 2007. The song is also again featured in "Guitar Hero Smash Hits". The song "Drive" was released as downloadable content for "Guitar Hero World Tour", as being released as a part of the Acoustic Pack. The song "Privilege" is featured in the video game "" for the PlayStation.
For the month of September 2009, players in the US that purchase "Guitar Hero 5" would be able to redeem a code with the game to receive a free copy of "" prior to its retail release with the packaging's offer sticker (printable if lost), a copy of the receipt and a barcode received upon registration. Also in the UK, when pre-ordering "Guitar Hero 5" on various websites you would receive a free copy of "Guitar Hero World Tour" when requested.
"Guitar Hero III Mobile" was released for mobile phones in 2007 and 2008, and was developed by MachineWorks Northwest LLC. The base version of the game includes 15 songs from both "Guitar Hero II" and "Guitar Hero III", and has released a three-song add-on pack every month since January 2008. The title has been downloaded by users one million times, with both Verizon and Hands-On Mobile claiming that over 250,000 songs are played a day on the platform.
The two companies produced two other mobile-based "Guitar Hero" games; "Guitar Hero III: Backstage Pass", released in July 2008, adds role-playing elements to manage the band's success in addition to the core rhythm game, while the mobile version of "Guitar Hero World Tour", released in December 2008, expands each included track for play on both lead guitar and drums, mimicking the expansion of the console series to the full band.
Guitar Hero Live was released to generally positive reception, with critics praising the new controller design for providing trickier and more realistic gameplay in comparison to previous Guitar Hero games, as well as the wider variety of content available via the GHTV mode. The main Live portion of the game received mixed reviews, with critics panning its weak soundtrack, lack of multiplayer, and describing the live action footage as being self-aware, exaggerated, and "campy". The GHTV mode also received mixed reception for its reliance on microtransactions, and the inability to permanently purchase songs to own.
In 2007, Harmonix and MTV Games released a new music title through rival publisher Electronic Arts, called "Rock Band". It expanded upon the gameplay popularized by the "Guitar Hero" series by adding drum and microphone instruments, allowing players to simulate playing songs as bands. Activision followed suit with the release of "Guitar Hero World Tour" in 2008, which supported multiple instruments. In 2009, Activision tripled its "Guitar Hero" offerings, and in addition to further continuation of the existing main series with "Guitar Hero 5" and expansions, they introduced the titles "Band Hero", geared towards more family-friendly pop music, and "DJ Hero", a game based on turntablism and featuring a number of mixes. With the release of "Guitar Hero 5", Activision considered the series to have moved away from its heavy metal basis into a broader selection of music. "Guitar Hero 5" is the first game in the series to use a new version of the series' logo; previous games used a logo in a font with sharper "points" on the letters, which was considered "idiosyncratic with a vengeance" to match the games' emphasis on heavy metal music. Activision used the services of the Pentagram design studio to refashion the game's logo. Pentagram developed a new font, removing some of the "aggressive odd" features to make the typeface more suitable and amendable to design feature incorporation to other games such as "Band Hero" and "DJ Hero".
All 48 tracks in the game are master recordings of songs previously featured in the first five published games of the "Guitar Hero" series: "Guitar Hero", "Guitar Hero II", "", "", and "". "Freya" and "Cult of Personality" are re-recordings performed by The Sword and Living Colour, respectively, while two other songs are taken from live concert recordings; all other songs are based on original studio recordings. Although the game supports user-created songs through the "GHTunes" service (common to "Guitar Hero World Tour" and "Guitar Hero: Metallica"), other existing downloadable content does not work with "Smash Hits". Songs in either the Career single player or band mode are arranged in tiers roughly in order of difficulty for the particular instrument, with different orders for each of the five Career paths. However, all songs are playable from the game's "Quickplay" mode without completing any Career goals. Twenty-one of the songs were exportable to both "Guitar Hero 5" and "Band Hero" for a small fee, with music licensing limiting which songs could be exported. The songs included in the game are as follows.
After the successful release of "Guitar Hero II", RedOctane announced they were looking into genre-specific expansions to the series. "Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s" is the first of these genre-specific titles; "", "", "" and "Guitar Hero Smash Hits" have since been released.
The game also supports downloadable tracks for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions; several free and for-cost downloadable songs and song packs are available on both the Xbox Live Marketplace and the PlayStation Store. In July 2008, Activision announced that it would release downloadable content for the Wii in the first quarter of 2008, but eventually was unable to do so because of limitations with the Wii's internal memory storage, an issue that was overcome in the sequel, "Guitar Hero World Tour". When rock band Metallica released their album "Death Magnetic" on September 12, 2008, it was also made available as a downloadable song pack for "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock", "Guitar Hero World Tour" and the 2009 spin-off "Guitar Hero Metallica". In addition, the compact disc soundtrack for the game offers a code used to redeem three exclusive playable tracks on the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Guitar Hero Smash Hits (titled Guitar Hero Greatest Hits in Europe and Australia) is a music rhythm game and the fourth expansion game to the "Guitar Hero" series. The game features 48 songs originally featured in five previous games in the series—"Guitar Hero", "Guitar Hero II", "", "" and ""—redesigning the songs to be based on master recordings and to include support for full band play first introduced to the series in "Guitar Hero World Tour". The game was developed by Beenox, published by Activision and distributed by RedOctane for release on the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360 systems and was released around the world in the second half of June 2009.
"" was released in late 2007 for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X platforms. The title is the first installment of the series to include wireless guitars bundled with the game and also the first to release a special bundle with two guitars. The game includes Slash and Tom Morello as playable characters in addition to the existing fictional avatars; both guitarists performed motion capture to be used for their characters' animation in the game.
"Guitar Hero World Tour", previously named "Guitar Hero IV", is the fourth full game in the series and was released on October 26, 2008 for PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. Analysts had expected that future "Guitar Hero" games in 2008 would include additional instrument peripherals to compete against "Rock Band"; "Guitar Hero World Tour" was confirmed as in development following the announcement of the merger between Activision and Vivendi Games in December 2007. Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick announced on April 21, 2008 that "Guitar Hero World Tour" will branch out into other instruments including vocals. "Guitar Hero World Tour" includes drums and vocals, and can be bought packaged with a new drum set controller, a microphone, and the standard guitar controller. A larger number of real-world musicians appear as playable characters, including Jimi Hendrix, Billy Corgan, Hayley Williams, Zakk Wylde, Ted Nugent, Travis Barker, Sting, and Ozzy Osbourne. "Guitar Hero World Tour" also features custom song creation that can be shared with others.
The song was later featured on a number of external media releases, including as a playable track on the 2005 music video game "Guitar Hero", on the 2006 comedy film "", as a playable track on the Guitar Hero TV mode of 2015 music video game "Guitar Hero Live", and in the trailer for 2015 wrestling video game "WWE 2K16".
"Guitar Hero: On Tour" was officially announced on September 7, 2007, at the Austin GDC '07, and released on June 22, 2008. During a conference call on May 8, 2008, Activision revealed that the game would be sold as an individual game (along with the "Guitar Grip") as well as bundled with the DS hardware itself. In North America, Nintendo released a bundle which included "Guitar Hero: On Tour" and a limited edition Silver/Black Nintendo DS Lite branded with the "Guitar Hero" logo. This bundle was available with the release of "Guitar Hero: On Tour" in the United Kingdom. This is the first third-party DS game to be included in such a bundle. When pre-ordered in certain stores, the consumer received either a special Guitar Hero: On Tour set of headphones, Nintendo DS Lite "wrap" pack (two stickers for use on the console) or an exclusive guitar pick stylus. The headphones and stylus feature the Guitar Hero: On Tour logo. On June 14, Toys "R" Us stores across the US hosted a "First to Play" event, where players tried out the game more than a week before its release. Also at the event, anyone who attended received a free Guitar Hero sticker, a temporary tattoo, and a special dog tag.
In April 2015, Activision announced a new entry in the series, titled "Guitar Hero Live". The title was developed by Activision's internal studio FreeStyleGames, who previously had worked on the "DJ Hero" spinoff titles. FreeStyleGames were given free rein to reboot the "Guitar Hero" series for next-generation consoles. One of their first innovations was to drop the standard five-button guitar controller, ultimately designing a six-button guitar controller, with two rows of three buttons each, allowing them to mimic actual guitar fingering. "Guitar Hero Live" was released with both a career and an online mode. The career mode used full-motion video taken from the perspective of a lead guitarist underneath the note highway, to create an immersive experience to the player. The online mode, called "GHTV", discarded the previous downloadable content approach and used a music video channel approach to stream playable songs to players, adding new songs to the catalog on a weekly basis. The game was released in October 2015.
In an earnings report shortly following the game's release, Activision stated that Guitar Hero Live was outselling their previous two Guitar Hero games, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock and Guitar Hero 5, though did not report exact sales numbers.[71] In their quarterly earnings results presented in February 2016, Activision reported that sales for Guitar Hero Live missed their expectations,[72] and in March 2016, announced that they had to let go of about 50 of FreeStyleGames' employees, though the studio still remains open to continue additional work for Activision.[73] Prior to the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, Activision stated they will continue to produce content for Guitar Hero Live but have no present plans for another game.[74]
"Guitar Hero 5" supports downloadable content; the first songs were made available shortly after the game's release. In addition, 152 of the 158 available downloadable songs for "Guitar Hero World Tour" are forward-compatible with "Guitar Hero 5" and "Band Hero"; the existing content is automatically upgraded to include all features new to these games and was immediately available to players upon release of "Guitar Hero 5". Downloaded songs can be used in all game modes, provided all players have the song, including in the game's Career mode when players are given the option to select any song to play. The entire Guitar Hero 5 DLC library is also available in Band Hero, and vice versa, so both games embrace the same DLC library.
RedOctane stated that the Xbox 360 version of "Guitar Hero II" "planned to feature more downloadable content than any other 360 title" utilizing the Xbox Live Marketplace, including many of the songs from the original "Guitar Hero" a week after the release of the game. Four such packs have been released since April 11, 2007. Additionally, two packs featuring new content to the "Guitar Hero" series have also been released, including songs from My Chemical Romance, Protest the Hero, Trivium, and Atreyu. There have also been individual track downloads featuring songs from bands Los Rodríguez, Pleymo, and Soilwork.
Guitar Hero II is a music rhythm game developed by Harmonix, published by Activision and distributed by RedOctane. It is the second installment in the "Guitar Hero" series and is the sequel to "Guitar Hero". It was first released for the PlayStation 2 in November 2006, and then for the Xbox 360 in April 2007, with additional content not originally in the PlayStation 2 version.
Sony's PlayStation 3 console has no compatibility with the PlayStation 2 "Guitar Hero" controller on the system. While "Guitar Hero" and "Guitar Hero II" are fully backward-compatible through the hardware PlayStation 2 emulation in the initial North American release of the console, it was impossible at launch to use the guitar controller to play either game. Kai Huang, of RedOctane, states that they are "working on that with Sony right now – looking at how we can get all the PlayStation 2 guitars that are out there, and all the owners of them, to use them on the PlayStation 3." Nyko, an accessories company, was poised to make a special PlayStation 2 controller adapter for the PlayStation 3, but put the product on hold due to technical difficulties. Tac, another accessories company, also made a PlayStation 2 controller adapter for a PlayStation 3 game console so players could use their "Guitar Hero" guitar controllers that were made for the PlayStation 2 with a PlayStation 3. However, the May 2007 PlayStation 3 V1.80 system update has made the guitar controller compatible with generic PlayStation 2 controller to USB adapters when playing "Guitar Hero" and "Guitar Hero II". In addition, Pelican Accessories has released a special controller adapter that supports both games, including the ability to switch the handedness of the guitar.
"Guitar Hero Smash Hits" (titled "Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits" in Europe and Australia) was released in June 2009. It features full-band versions of 48 songs from earlier "Guitar Hero" games that only used the guitar controller. Unlike the previous versions, each of the songs is based on a master recording that includes some live tracks. The game follows a similar model as "Guitar Hero: Metallica", and was developed by Neversoft and Beenox Studios for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and Wii.
"Guitar Hero Live" is a 2015 music video game that's developed by FreeStyleGames and published by Activision. It is the first title in the "Guitar Hero" series since it went on hiatus after 2011, and the first game in the series available for 8th generation video game consoles (PlayStation 4, Wii U, and Xbox One). The game was released worldwide on 20 October 2015 for these systems as well as the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and iOS devices including the Apple TV.
"" is the sixth main game in the "Guitar Hero" series, released by Activision to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii consoles in September 2010. The game was developed by Activision's subsidiary studios RedOctane, Neversoft, and Vicarious Visions; the latter provided support for additional features in the Wii version of the game. Following a decline in sales of music games in 2009, partially due to the large number of music games released that year, Activision scaled back their efforts in the "Guitar Hero" series. "Warriors of Rock" represents the final game developed by RedOctane and Neversoft. Both studios' respective "Guitar Hero" divisions were closed once the game was complete, with key personnel brought into Activision directly for future games. It was initially announced that Vicarious Visions would take over future game development of the "Guitar Hero" series, however due to declining music game sales, all further development of the "Guitar Hero" series was cancelled, until 2015 when "Guitar Hero Live" was released.