Seven45 Studios Announces Power Gig – First Music Video Game With Real Guitar
Seven45 Studios has announced a product that the guitar manufacturing industry has been waiting with bated breath for…a guitar video game that utilized a real guitar. Replacing the color-coded plastic guitar controller that has make Guitar Hero and Rock Band a video game sensation, Seven45 Studios will provide a real six-string guitar as their controller for Power Gig: Rise of the Sixstring, due out this fall for Xbox 360 and PS3.
Boston-based developer Seven45 Studios, which is a subsidiary of musical instrument manufacturer First Act, began working on the game and controller more than two years ago when they witnessed the unprecedented popularity of Guitar-oriented gaming. The real kicker is that while Guitar Hero and Rock Band were great vehicles to generate interest in guitar, drums and vocals, they did little to potty-train players into learning how to truly play.
Power Gig is much like Rock Band in that it includes vocals and drums, as well as a 3/4 sized guitar. The game will come packaged with a drum kit, microphone and the aforementioned six-string guitar. According to the company, the Power Gig Guitars will come in multiple incarnations, including some choice licensing of known models.
Power Gig will also use color-coded action, but will have a beginner mode for just hitting the appropriate string and advanced mode for playing actual chords. Instead of the current game’s “highway metaphor, the music is represented in a vertical DNA-strand string of streaming colored orbs.
Industry watchers have been touting game-based learning for a while, but only a few products have emerged. Beaterator, from Rock Star Games, didn’t gain much traction despite solid execution. Hopefully, Power Gig will at least get the Guitar Hero out of their diapers and into some real underware, well, at least Pullups.
No pricing has been officially announced, but the company said it will be competitive with Guitar Hero and Rock Band. It will be available sometime this Fall, just in time for the Holiday shopping season. More information on Power Gig, well not really, their website is pretty anemic…
