Answer: No. The DLC you’ll get in Guitar Hero 5 is not usable in Guitar Hero: World Tour, according to Destructoid, and it’s not a big surprise why. They’re two different games.

An Activision rep told D’toid that “advancements and innovations” in Guitar Hero 5 make playing its DLC on previous versions a no-go. These features include vocal star power and and advanced drumming mode.

Bringing your existing DLC up to Guitar Hero 5 is possible through an export/import mechanism, but again, for a price, which Activision has not revealed. Also, it’s applicable only to 152 of the 158 songs in the World Tour and Smash Hits catalogue, and no one knows which songs are the blacklisted six.

Guitar Hero 5 DLC Won’t be Compatible with Guitar Hero World [Destructoid]

Franchise compatible means no new band sets to replace your old ones and you can keep the music you’ve downloaded for World Tour as well. But there’s more to Activision’s plan than just a unified music system. Seriously—they brought Johnny Cash back from the dead both in the game and in the form of a live cover band at the event. And beyond that, they’re already thinking about the future of the franchise well down the road from Guitar Hero 5.

Kinda looks like Cash doesn’t like his cover band…

Bright wouldn’t say too much about what lies ahead, but he did share some of the things his team at Neversoft has learned over the years. “We learned it’s not always fun to play a four piece band,” he said. “Sometimes people want to fight over the guitar, sometimes people don’t want to play bass even though we added the open note. Some people just suck at drums and don’t want to play it, it’s intimidating. And we wanted to go green and there’s a lot of guitars out there.”

It’s a lot like taiko drumming.

Bright also said he was excited about Project Natal and other motion-control-related E3 announcements. “We’ve done prototype motion controls with guitars in the past, with just the accelerometer,” he said. “But you just don’t get the refined data that you’d get when start throwing in things like they showed at E3. Just the single accelerometer—trying to put the guitar behind your head, the game just doesn’t know. Would we be interested [in Natal]? Absolutely. I’m not saying that’s what we’re doing. But it’s cool, it’s exciting stuff. Even Wii MotionPlus…there’s definitely avenues to be explored there.”

The one thing Bright isn’t looking forward to is the typical “Why isn’t artist X in the game?” complaint most music games get. “Specifically Led Zeppelin,” he added.

He also frowns on people who plan to write Guitar Hero 5 off as “not that different” from Guitar Hero: World Tour. “You have to play the game, you have to experience it. You will never want to go back to playing the old standard game. We take the stance at Neversoft that we’re making video games. We’re not music snobs, I mean we love music. But ultimately, we’re making a video game that’s fun to play and a way to experience music. Have fun, lighten up.”

Guitar Hero 5 is out for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii September 1. Here, have some screens:

That’s what happens in this video. Guitar Hero fan and “speedcuber” Julian plays Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mr. Crowley” in Guitar Hero World Tour on expert difficulty while also solving two Rubik’s Cubes with his free hand.

Sorry, should’ve warned you to take your shoes off, because your socks were probably just blown right through them. Oh, and did I mention that he plays the entire song with his elbow? Then you’ll forgive Julian for only scoring a 77% completion and a note streak of 51. The guy is clearly preoccupied with things other than perfection. Plus he’s playing off of the reflection of the TV in a mirror in order to capture this event on video.

If you begin to feel faint while witnessing the intensity that is Julian’s “Multicolored Multitask,” perhaps you should ease into this with a previous video in which he solves just one Rubik’s Cube singlehandedly while playing the Smashing Pumpkins.

Thanks for the heads up, James!

In the store’s latest catalogue, which runs until August 10, the Guitar Hero World Tour bundle is $199. Same price for the Wii, PS2, 360 and PS3 versions.

Still not as cheap as you can find the Rock Band bundle for at some retailers, but still good value. Have you spotted a better GHWT deal recently?

With Fahey’s life-long crusade nearing its rapturous conclusion, Activision have announced that Stan Bush’s “The Touch” will be available as a free download for Guitar Hero: World Tour on May 28.

That’s today!

While I’d have preferred Lion’s rendition of the 1986 film’s theme, or even NRG’s Instruments of Destruction, I know not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Esepcially when, knowing Activision, we could easily have gotten this version of the song instead.

Nickelodeon once again justifies our nation’s voting age restrictions, as Guitar Hero World Tour comes out at the top of a rather sad nominee pool at the 2009 Kids’ Choice Awards.

Not that Guitar Hero World Tour isn’t a fine game, and out of the four nominees it could certainly be argued from a certain perspective that it was the best. When the nominees are Guitar Hero World Tour, Rock Band 2, Mario Kart Wii, and Mario Super Sluggers, it’s probably best to just close your eyes and hit a button.

The final group of four games to be considered for the coveted Favourite Video Game award were determined by Nickelodeon viewer survey, more than likely limited to T for Teen rated games and below, which would explain the lack of games more deserving of the title. I cannot imagine how many children were disappointed by the lack of Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto 4, Gears of War 2, and Fable II on the ballot.

With such limitations put on their choices, how does choosing Guitar Hero World Tour prove that children shouldn’t be allowed to vote? It doesn’t. Choosing Jesse McCartney over T-Pain in the Favourite Male Sing category does. Come on kids, he’s on a boat!

2009 Kids’ Choice Award Winners [Nickelodeon]

It’s company policy at Activision to exploit franchises. And you can’t very well exploit Guitar Hero: World Tour if it’s not on PC, can you? So Activision are bringing the game to PC (and Mac!).

Aspyr (who brought Guitar Hero III to the PC/Mac) will be handling the port, which will feature all the on-disc songs from the console versions, as well as the song creator. What it won’t feature, however, is the Guitar Hero marketplace you can find on the console versions, where people can trade user-created content.

As for downloadable content, that’s a big “maybe” at this point, Aspyr unable to confirm or deny that PC gamers will be able to buy content post-purchase.

The PC/Mac version will ship with a single guitar controller. If you want more controllers, it’s compatible with the PS3 instruments, which you can buy separately easily enough.

It’ll be out in June.

There’s so much Rock Band DLC on offer every week that it’s easy to forget that, occasionally, Guitar Hero World Tour gets some as well. Here’s what it’s getting for the month of April.

On April 2, there’ll be three Pixies songs made available: Debaser, Monkey Gone To Heaven & The Sad Punk. April 9 sees the release of three tracks by the Silversun Pickups, those being Panic Switch, It’s Nice to Know You Work Alone & Well Thought Out Twinkles.

On April 16, Steely Dan’s Black Friday, Kid Charlemagne and Bodhisattva will be released, while on April 23, you can get Jailbait, Love Me Like a Reptile and Iron Fist by Motörhead.

Rounding out the month will be a Nirvana track pack on April 30, including Very Ape, Sappy & Stay Away.

JJ Lechleiter, Senior Product Manager on all three Guitar Hero Mobile titles explains why his games are like the only two cell phone ports that don’t suck.

For those of you that have never played Guitar Hero III Mobile, Guitar Hero III: Backstage Pass Mobile or Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile, it might come as a shock that you can play the game without a plastic guitar (or plastic drums). Developer Hands-On got their heads around that early on in GHIII’s development and were able to keep it sexy by dropping the fret count from five to three. They also were able to hang on to original song content and score master tracks by approaching music rights holders on their own, instead of waiting around for Activision to do it.

“Most of the R&D went into making the audio sound as good as possible,” said Lechleiter. They got around the challenges of only having a single audio channel on most cell phones by having a third party develop an audio mixer that could supply four channels for separate sounds (guitar, drums, crowd noises, etc.), and by focusing on all the different audio types that mobile phones support (MP3, AMR, AAC, MIDI, etc.).

“Everyone wants MPS3 quality,” he said. “MIDI I think is acceptable as a lowest common denominator – but that’s what people are looking for, the true experience”

The game’s quality isn’t just about sound, though. By introducing head-to-head multiplayer that works across all different kinds of cell phone, World Tour is like a breakthrough for mobile gaming. Players can either do drums or guitar and the server does the rest in terms of matchmaking and providing four common songs between competitors. Hands-On provides a website where people can look at their stats and the stats of competitors, and the developer makes a habit of releasing one new song a month for free.

This puts their three mobile titles at something like 4 million purchases with other over 250,000 songs downloaded a day, says Lechleiter.

I think World Tour is an example of a mobile developer being aware of a platform’s limits instead of blithely assuming quality doesn’t matter. Hopefully, other developers will follow their lead.

“We’re kind of in the infancy of music games right now,” Lechleiter said. “I’m happy with [World Tour] and I’m excited to see what people can do [in the future].”

Confirming what was reported on Transformers fan site Seibertron.com Monday, Stan Bush passes along his thanks for all of your efforts to get his classic song into Guitar Hero.

Thanks so much for all your support! Because of the overwhelming enthusiasm from fans like you, “The Touch” will soon be available for Guitar Hero! Activision will be offering it as a free download. We did it!

We did it indeed! I was off doing some last-minute moving stuff when the initial announcement was first posted, so I missed out on the initial celebration of the end of our long struggle, but I’m at my best when the going gets tough. I mean, I’ve been put to the test and it’s never enough.

Check out Stan’s full message below, and give yourselves a nice pat on the back.

Dear Kotaku fans,

Thanks so much for all your support! Because of the overwhelming enthusiasm from fans like you, “The Touch” will soon be available for Guitar Hero! Activision will be offering it as a free download. We did it!

All the best!

Stan Bush