During the Game Developers Conference today in San Francisco a development studio Seven47 announced their new product, a new guitar that will forever change the rhythm gaming industry. Essentially they released a new controller used for videogames that is an actual guitar. Engadget has the press release of the product.

Many new sites had different things to say about the product, how it is good or it will fail. One that stood out particularly for me was the criticism by Joystick. The author, Andrew Yoon, was very blunt to say how he believed there was no apparent value of a new guitar game. With the giants of Guitar Hero and Rock Band to compete with there is very little a new competitor can offer to the market. The author went on future stating the equipment was too large compared to the other equipment being offered by Guitar Hero or Rock band. He also stated that if they didn’t offer drums and microphone equipment it would be a step backwards (which may not be the case according to an article by engadget).

The truth is this piece of equipment is not supposed to be a toy guitar, it is supposed to be closer to a real guitar. This new piece of equipment is supposed to emulate a guitar much better than any of the other products so far. With equipment using 6 strings instead of buttons, the user can learn to play chord and do much more than learn rhythm and timing being offered in other rhythm games so far. Also this guitar tool can be plugged into an amp and the user can jam with other guitar players (this is not going to be as good as a Gibson guitar, but a good learning guitar). Essentially this toy is a stepping stone for people who want to take their joy of the rhythm game to the next level, and learn an instrument.

I personally didn’t like rhythm games because I felt they took people away from actually learning to play music. It gave people an opportunity to pretend they were a rock star but never really learn the beauty of creating music. This tool will give people who are scared to learn a musical instrument a chance to become an artist with simple learning games. Supposedly the game is tooled in a way that after you beat the game in the hardest difficulty that you will actually be able to play the songs.
At this time very little is known about the actual game but supposedly the game will have a story different than any other. From the article written by the Xbox team, they state the story will involve a revolution where music is used as a weapon. At this time it will be a while before the game will be released so little information is known. As for graphics, the graphics of the game are sub-par, being compared to PS2 or Game Cube graphics. This is Seven47 first game created, and they are a guitar company moving into the gaming industry.

This is an excellent step forward to give gamer a chance to become actually musical artist. As more information becomes available about Seven47 new product, we’ll be following the story.