Ubisoft Announces Music Game For Real Guitars 172
Despite recent troubles in the music game market, Ubisoft thinks the genre still has room for innovation. They have announced Rocksmith, a rhythm game designed for use with real electric guitars. The guitars will connect to a console or PC through the standard output jack.
"... the 'note highway' is actually a virtual guitar fretboard, complete with numbers which correspond to the different frets, and the 'target zone' consists of six horizontal strings. Wherever each note appears on the virtual fret board, that’s where your finger(s) go on the physical fretboard. Once the note reaches the target area you strum the string it comes into contact with. Simple. The camera zooms dynamically to highlight where on the fret board you should be looking at, in much the same way that a musician’s eyes would scan up and down the neck of the instrument during a performance."
rock band 3 already has this (Score:2, Informative)
You can already play with a real guitar using rock band 3. You can't use any guitar though, you have to buy the Fender Rock Band Pro Squier Strat. I have it and it is awesome.
Ubisoft's game is not the first announced game that lets you use any electric guitar. That honor goes to Guitar Rising, which was never released.
Re:rock band 3 already has this (Score:4, Informative)
The game is a good option for self learning. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.
The Long History of Real Guitar Games (Score:5, Informative)
Guitar Rising [guitarrising.com] was first to announce a real guitar game back in 2008 but never released, presumably because of problems with the polyphonic pitch detection.
The first real guitar game released was LittleBigStar [littlebigstar.net], back in 2009. LittleBigStar supported a wide range of instruments, including guitar and bass, and loaded mp3s and standard tablatures in different open formats. It had a good momentum and indie developers made different kinds of musicgames, which they called MusicWare, but it was closed down two years ago. By those measures RockSmith is hardly new...
The LittleBigStar team decided to go commercial, presumably because they had success cracking the polyphonic pitch detection nut. They released Offbeat guitarist [jamorigin.com] which is freeware, support open formats and works great.
In 2009 Disney claimed to have found the holy grail of music gaming: Disney Star Guitarist [wired.com] but it was never released.
In 2010 Rise of the SixString was released with a guitar-controller hybrid.
Holiday 2010, Harmonix showed RockBand 3 pro-mode with the Squier Strat Controller. It went for sale in BestBuy stores in March 2011.
Holiday 2011, UbiSoft claim to have found the big new thing...