14 DAY TRIAL // There's no question that Guitar Hero, in its various incarnations, is a very successful franchise and one of the main money makers for publisher Activision. Even if the title is now facing strong competition from Harmonix' Rock Band series, it's still selling strong and World Tour, the latest installment, is seeing a good launch period.
Now there are reports indicating that Activsion and, of all companies, Konami are working together in order to produce and market an arcade machine that runs Guitar Hero. Apparently, the cabinet housing the game will have eight or ten speakers for a full surround experience, more than 500 LED lights designed to create a stadium like atmosphere and a huge 32'' monitor to display the interface of the game itself. The current rumor also says that the idea is to hook all the arcade machines up to the Internet so that gamers can play with each other and, presumably, with those playing Guitar Hero at home.
Konami would be a natural partner for an arcade machine because they have experience in this field. They have created games like Guitar Freaks and DrumMania which were released for the arcades in Japan and never made it to the United States. Before the company could capitalize on its head start, Guitar Hero was launched and swept the market. Creating an arcade machine which runs Guitar Hero would basically turn the whole history full circle and could see arcade joints populated with fake guitars and people pretending to be rock stars. The downside is that arcade joints have been on the decline for some time now and maybe will not be bothered to leave the comfort of their homes to play another Guitar Hero title.
At the moment, there's no official confirmation from either Konami or from Activision regarding the arcade initiative, but an announcement could come soon in case the rumor is indeed true.