Guitar Hero World Tour's mystery instrument: a MIDI sequencer

This is, frankly, incredible.
Yeah yeah, cue the whines about "its too complex, i can't be bothered", but a fair few wannabe musicians will be ALL over this.

I'm reminded of the 90's, when Atari stuck a midi port in the ST, and this allowed massive uptake in small studios and bedroom musicians.

And "hardware issues"? Oooooo, burrrrrrrrn!

I dunno that's pretty meh, I mean did they say instrument? Because I would classify a midi sequencer as more of a tool. And come on if you are going to make something like this it needs to be cross platform!

Way cool. But aren't they trying to make all versions similar? If hardware issues limit the 360 to drums, I guess the wii version won't even get it... or be limited to woodblock.

Can you use your own MIDI sequencer I wonder? Will it be proprietary software created for GHWT, or can you use any sequencing software? Will the transfer (or required software) be Windows PC only?

These are the questions whose answers will weigh heavily on my decision to get GHWT!

My 360 and I are gonna have a heart-to-heart tonight...

"the Xbox 360 alternative will be limited to drums alone due to "hardware issues.""

Why not just do that to all the other systems to make it fair. I know this will probably make someone RAGE.

What? So the 360 crouwd get's screwed? I'm not sure if I would ever do this, but I'm still kinda pissed about it. However, I like the idea of importing songs you compose on the PC in.

Well, their inability to get around the aforementioned "hardware issues" just resulted in my purchasing of the game being canceled as the result of "budget issues."

Instead of putting stuff that a very small minority cares about, they should focus on making the gameplay better. Cause seriously, the bastards still going to be adding guitar battles into the game.

Who cares? Rock Band 2 is out!

Bah!

I was sort of expecting the 'mystery peripheral' to be some kind of PC link given all the talk about user content creation and how they got one of the leading 'modders' of the earlier incarnations in to work on it.

My dreams of getting my own little collection of tunes into GHWT were initialy dashed by the unbelivebly cumbersome looking 'manual' way of generating content now I have my hopes rasied by a MIDI Sequencer only to be dashed sentences later by not supporting the 360 other than with drums.

Honestly whats the point of that! of all the instruments the drums are surely going to be the easiest to do directly from whithin the game.

I dont even see a reason to buy GH:WT now :/

Might as well get the users to create new tracks on a regular basis since Activision sure as shit isn't going to do it.

Man, that pic brought back pretty awefull memories!!!!!

Can tracks created on the PS3 be downloaded on the 360? If so, there's little reason for 360 owners to bother with the in game studio. Somebody on the PS3 will already have done it.

I've also been wondering about copyright issues. I assume Activision doens't want to be sued for what the user base does. I also wonder if there's any insidious small print. Like, "If you put your bands song into the game we own it".

As a PS3 owner, this is just about the best announcement they could have made.

But I don't quite get these "hardware issues." What could be easier than importing and utilizing midi data? That's like saying the next Intel processors won't support Windows Calculator because of hardware issues.

If anything, instruments other than drums should be easier to implement, because drum sounds vary between soundbanks. Half the time you won't get out anything resembling what you put in.

In any case, the drums are pretty much the one instrument I *would* prefer to do in-game, since using a real pseudo-drumset has got to be a lot easier and more fun than tapping out beats on a keyboard.

So yeah, lame about that. I guess it doesn't matter much to me, though.

Xbox can't handle a simple MIDI machine, haha.

MIDI compatability is going to be easy for those who understand DAW software but for the general gamer who hasn't played the MTV/Music series on PSone and PS2 it's going to be complicated trying to teach things like velocity levels, note lengths and tempo changes. It's odd how the 360 can't seem to handle more than a few imported MIDI channels but luckily I own a PS3 so that isn't an issue in my case. I foresee copyrighted songs not being allowed to be uploaded to the GH:WT network but this will be easily bypassed with general online sharing, most likely by a dedicated website like there are with Frets On Fire. I'm more curious about how GH:WT will handle machine gun playback (think of a snare roll, a constant row of hits with no velocity change). Drum samplers include a humanisation option that'll vary a string of hits so it sounds more like a live drummer. If Activision plans to include this I hope it will be controllable with a on/off switch for those who want complete control over the playback of their tracks.

Oh darn..the 360 version doesn't get anything but the drums addition. Geez-i guess we will just have to wait for Gears 2 for a game to show some love!