Guitar Hero World Tour on stage at D6 News

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was on stage yesterday at the Wall Street Journal's D6: All Things Digital conference in California, and took the opportunity to introduce the next big thing for the Guitar Hero series - namely, of course, the addition of drums and vocals to the band.

Inviting American Idol judge (and car-crash reality TV star) Paula Abdul to the stage, Kotick got her to pick a band from the audience - and in a fortuitous, entirely not staged definitely not totally impromptu piece of good luck, she happened to notice Tony Hawk sitting there just begging to play the plastic guitar. How convenient!

All snarkiness aside, there's a video of the performance up on the All Things Digital site, which includes some footage of the game in action as well as the players strumming, drumming and singing away.

It's worth a look if you're now caught on the waves of indecision over whether to clutter up your living room with Rock Band plastic instruments, or wait for the next set of plastic instruments (although remember, they might just save your marriage, apparently).

Perhaps the most telling moment in the video, however, is right at the beginning when WSJ columnist Kara Swisher, interviewing Kotick on stage, manages to call the game "Rock Band" - leading to chuckles from the audience and slight discomfort from Kotick himself. Well, she's got a point - as the footage ably demonstrates.

Guitar Hero World Tour is headed for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and PS2 late this year, and hopefully won't repeat Rock Band's trick of taking bloody ages to appear in Europe.