New 'Guitar Hero' has you rocking at center stage

Get ready for some first-person guitar slinging.

After a five-year layoff, the Guitar Hero franchise returns hitting several new chords including a first-person point of view and live-action band mates, crowds and roadies.

The guitar controller has a new look, too. Those candy-colored buttons are gone, replaced by a new compact six-button outlay manipulated by your index, middle and ring fingers.

Another twist: When Guitar Hero Live arrives this fall it will be playable with the guitar controller on mobile and portable devices as well as the Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox One, Nintendo Wii U, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Game publisher Activision and developer FreeStyle Games wouldn't offer much more detail on that cross-platform playability. But Activision Publishing senior director Tyler Michaud said, "Imagine someone is using the television in your house, you can take (the game) in the other room and play on your phone screen or on your tablet screen with the whole guitar."

Those who don't own a console video game system will also be able to play the game on a TV through their mobile device. "You can have the full experience," Michaud said.

Rewind to 2008: Guitar Hero and competing music game franchise Rock Band helped drive music video game sales to nearly $2 billion. Sales figures fell for subsequent games even though games added vocals, drums and other instruments.

With industry analysts – and consumers, to be honest – decrying the flooding of the music game market, developers turned the volume down on the genre. 2010's Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock was Activision's last release for the franchise.

At its peak, Guitar Hero generated more than $1 billion in annual retail revenue, estimated Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia in a note on Monday, who said he would expect more modest revenue, at least initially, with the relaunch.

Harmonix, which developed the original Guitar Hero game (it was published by Activision and Red Octane), has Rock Band 4 in the works for later this year, too.

When it came time to resurrect the franchise, Activision leaned on the team at FreeStyleGames in Leamington Spa, U.K., north of London. The studio, acquired by Activision in 2008, had produced the acclaimed DJ Hero and DJ Hero 2 games.

"We starting thinking about what was it about Guitar Hero that made it the game phenomenon that it became," said Jamie Jackson, the creative director and studio head at FreeStyleGames. "The one common theme that kept coming up was ... it makes me feel like a rock star."

So they set out to "make everyone feel like a rock star again," Jackson said. "That was our goal."

For starters, to help draw players into the world, the controller buttons were reworked to make the button-matching feel more like playing a real guitar. On-screen the scrolling notes are seen as guitar picks aimed up or down.

If they are down – as they all are on the easier Rookie level – you use the easier-to-tap lower half of the row of touch-sensitive buttons – and simultaneously hit the strum button. When the picks are aimed up – as they can on more difficult levels – you stretch your fingers to use the buttons on the upper half. The harder the song, the faster the picks fly by and switch between the two sets of buttons.

Then, the designer wanted to find a way to make the game more realistic. Thus, the first-person, live-action video strategy over a return to the animated 3-D characters of previous games.

Using Hollywood filming techniques such as those used on The Hobbit, the team directed on-stage musicians and audiences of up to 400 actors to re-enact countless song performances and crowd reactions to them – all as motion control cameras recorded the action.

Songs were mixed to match the venue – think a tent at a festival like Coachella or a mammoth stadium show – and your position. If the action takes you closer to the drummer, "you are actually going to hear the drums come through the mix a little bit more," Jackson said. "But then as you run and go into the crowd you are going to hear the crowd a little bit more. It's a completely immersive experience."

The playlist includes artists such as The Black Keys, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Gary Clark Jr., Green Day, Ed Sheeran and The Rolling Stones.

In addition to a wide variety of current and older tracks of many different genres that can be played solo and cooperatively – expect more details later on additional modes – Guitar Hero Live will also include GHTV, an online arcade mode.

A 24-7 music video network, GHTV is stocked with curated channels of music videos that are playable; you can compete against others in real-time and record high scores and achievements. "There might be a 'Top 20 or a Top 10 show or 'Rock Hits of the '80s,' " Jackson said.

Activision always intended to pick up Guitar Hero again, Michaud said. "But we always said we wouldn't until we said we had real innovation ... that fundamentally transforms the way you play the game," he said. "This truly is the reinvention of Guitar Hero."

Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider