Guitar Hero III's Rock 'N' Roll Star Interview

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Eurogamer: Having come up as a third party peripheral company, is it maybe encouraging to have your peripherals on other games than your own?

Kai Huang: I think there's definitely advantages to that. Seeing the proliferation of the hardware and the software, and seeing it work on other parties' games, is certainly a possibility, but I think that we can't make any guarantees that our hardware is going to work on anybody else's software.

And if my parents are crying THEN I'LL DIG A TUNNEL from MY WINDOW TO YOURS.

Eurogamer: One of the main criticisms about Guitar Hero II is the track listing itself, and that it wasn't perhaps a bit more varied, with a few more poppy numbers in there. Is your solution to that moving forwards what you'll be able to offer online?

Kai Huang: That's definitely one of the things we're going to do. You know, you can only fit so many songs onto one game. It's a very difficult job of picking the right ones, and the ones fans are going to like, and of course getting it out there you're never going to please everyone. But the beauty of downloadable content and what we can do on Xbox Live and PS3 is that we're going to be able to offer a wider range of music out there to fit more musical tastes. So when the 360 gets going - and you'll see that we've already launched our downloadable content - we started with the songs from Guitar Hero 1, but we're going to shortly follow up with new music, and hopefully fans will be able to see that we're really broadening that music for them, and that's one way to do that.

Eurogamer: There have been some initial criticisms about the cost of the downloadable tracks. Are you going to stick with the current pricing?

Kai Huang: We've done a lot of evaluation on the pricing and the costs for each of the songs and how they work for each of the packs, and we think that they're priced competitively, but certainly we listen to the fans and we take that feedback, and if that's something we'll need to evaluate we'll do that.

YEAH A TUNNEL.

Eurogamer: Going forward, do you plan to stick to the model of big sequels, or will you perhaps adopt an approach like Sony's SingStar, with an online store where you can download songs from an iTunes Music Store-style shopfront.

Kai Huang: I think Sony's SingStar model is a great model and a great thing to model ourselves after. What we're going to be doing with Guitar Hero is a combination of both. There will be a lot of people who have an online connection who will be able to download new music, so we want to obviously offer them an opportunity to download more music than you can get in the game. But then there will be consumers who don't have online connections and we want to make sure they have a great experience as well. So I think we're going to follow definitely a model of both. We're going to be releasing more disc-based games throughout the year, and then we're going to be offering more online content.

Eurogamer: For those disc-based games, are you planning for genre discs?

Kai Huang: I think there's definitely an opportunity to do that with Guitar Hero - to focus on certain genres of music, even within rock, and that's something that we're evaluating right now.

Eurogamer: The debate goes on about using original tracks versus using cover versions, as you do, to bring out the guitar lines more. Would you prefer to use the original masters?

Kai Huang: We're definitely very happy with our model, and I think in the future we would like to use more masters and original version songs, but sometimes the song may be a little bit too long, or maybe we have to change it slightly to make it a little bit more fun and to really bring out the guitar, as you said, so we're going to continue to do both. Where it's appropriate we're going to re-record the songs and the re-recording studio that we use does fantastic work, and so whatever ends up making the gameplay the best is what we're going to follow. But I think fans will be excited to hear that in the future we're going to have more masters than we have now, and more of the original music.

(I've been ordered to stop that.)

Eurogamer: Are you going to work on any solution that allows PS3 owners to use the PS2 controller on their console?

Kai Huang: We're working on that with Sony right now - looking at how we can get all the PS2 guitars that are out there, and all the owners of them, to use them on the PS3. Unfortunately we don't have any promises yet, but we're definitely working hard to see if we can make that happen.

Eurogamer: Going back to the point about disc-based releases, how many are we likely to see in the next 12 months for instance?

Kai Huang: I think that fans can definitely expect that we're going to have one major release a year, and then what we're doing beyond that major release is to release update packs and content packs so there's more songs. We haven't announced exactly how many we'll be releasing every year, but certainly we're going to be releasing multiple ones beyond that one major release per year, and then what we're going to be doing is localising the music as well. So for the SingStar model, what they've done of course is to bring very localised music into every country, and I think that's a great opportunity for Guitar Hero to work with local artists, to really promote the music and the bands that are popular in each of the different countries.

Eurogamer: Looking at the future of rhythm-action in technology terms, where do you think we'll be in five years' time?

Kai Huang: The peripherals side of this game is critical, we think - and obviously having the background of being a hardware manufacturer we may be a little bit biased - but such an important part of the game is the tactile feel and having that guitar in your hands and really feeling like you're a rock star. Imagine this game would be totally different if you were playing on just a regular standard gamepad controller, so that experience is really important and we plan to improve that. We've got designs for different guitars, whether that's new shapes or new colours; we've got designs obviously for wireless, which we'll be releasing at the end of this year for all platforms; and then we're looking at really cool interesting finishes and different ideas that we can do with the guitar to make them a little bit more exciting, and in fact we're even looking at making some higher-end guitars that might be made out of real wood.

But SINCE! THERE'S NO ONE ELSE AROUND!

Eurogamer: Nice. And finally, how good are you at the game?

Kai Huang: [Laughs] Right now, I'd say I'm okay. I've reached a sticking point. I can finish all the songs on Hard and I'm just going through a few on Expert, but that's kind of my sticking point right now.