Activision: Guitar Hero 4 this "holiday"

Activision bigwig Mike Griffith has said the next instalment in the Guitar Hero series will be out this "holiday", or Christmas as we quaintly like to call it.

He told analysts during a conference call that plenty of resources had been poured into the game to provide a "significant leap forward in innovation" on all platforms.

"We've put a lot of additional development resources, a lot of additional music licenses resources, a lot of additional hardware supplier resources against the title to fuel growth over next year," said Griffith.

"We're excited by the increased musical content and innovation we're bringing. We do expect a leap forward in innovation with our holiday launch, and we're about two weeks away from providing very specific details on that."

That innovation will be the "other instruments" and "vocals" publisher overlord Bobby Kotick talked about last month, presumably. Kotick also promised localised songs from bands in your area [will that include popular Lewisham garage combo Pay-As-You-Go Crew? - Dep Ed], as well as the benefits of merging with Vivendi to access the Universal Music Group's library of songs.

Griffith also went on to talk about DS-exclusive offering Guitar Hero: On Tour. It's due out sometime in July and has a fret-board peripheral that clips onto the side of your handheld so you can finger your way through hairy passages while strumming your strings on the DS touch-screen.

Griffith promised a DS hardware bundle to go with the game, too.

Activision also has Guitar Hero: Aerosmith up its sleeve, which is based around the legendary rock group and their rise to fame. This is due out on Xbox 360, PS3, PS2 and Wii on 30th June.