One of gaming's greatest franchises returns this year

Activision

Your bandmate, for better or worse.

Music games like "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" had a meteoric rise and subsequent fall.

For a few years, it was impossible to go to a bar or party without running into a group of folks huddled around a screen, furiously attempting to recreate music using plastic, instrument-shaped game controllers. The flood of faux instruments attached to music games resulted in a collapse; the folks buying those games grew tired of them just as quickly as they'd picked them up.

Complimentary Tech Event

Transform talent with learning that works

Capability development is critical for businesses who want to push the envelope of innovation.Discover how business leaders are strategizing around building talent capabilities and empowering employee transformation.Know More

By 2011, second-hand stores across the world were littered with the discarded controllers of years past.

Four years later, and the genre is getting an encore: "Guitar Hero Live" is a new music game which uses a plastic guitar-shaped game controller peripheral. It's headed to Xbox, PlayStation, phones, and tablets this fall.

Given that most folks aren't still holding on to aging plastic guitar controllers, there's a new version being created for "Guitar Hero Live." Rather than the traditional five button horizontal layout, the new guitar has two rows of three buttons. The game's publisher says this new setup allows players to "play two-row combinations that mimic real chords."

The game's focus this time is on the "live" experience, putting players in the position of a lead guitarist facing crowds of actual people. Here's an example:

Activision

The crowd loves you!

But the crowd won't always love you! Here's how they look when you do poorly:

Activision

The guy in the feather hat is totally bummed.

To that extent, "Guitar Hero Live" is powered by a network of music videos spanning a variety of music genres. This is "GHTV," which is described as, "the world's first playable live music video network." What that means for players is that the game is powered by music videos, available on-demand, which will expand the game's playable library of songs beyond what comes on the disc this fall.

But will that be enough? Will "Guitar Hero Live" bring players back to the game genre that its owners help to obliterate with over saturation? We'll find out this fall, when both "Guitar Hero Live" and its competitor "Rock Band 4" launch.