Guitar Hero Gets Exclusive Aerosmith Access

The battle of music simulators is getting bitterer by the day. Activision has just announced that, as part of the deal regarding the upcoming game Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the band is signed to exclusively deliver musical content for the Guitar Hero franchise. In other words, there will be no DLC related to Aerosmith coming to the ever growing lineup of Rock Band songs that you can download off the Internet and then play using the game.

Tim Riley, who is vice president at Activision and in charge of music affairs, declared: "I can say that we do have the band exclusively, and their catalog should be exclusive to us beyond the one or two tracks they had licensed out to Rock Band before we made our deal", while talking to Level Up about the music sim games.

This is a very interesting development in the competition between Rock Band and Guitar Hero. The two franchises, instead of inhabiting separate niches on the videogames market, seem to be heading for a direct confrontation. Rock Band is getting ready to be launched in Europe and is announcing big plans to release full albums from bands as DLC for low prices. Another sign of intense prepping is to be found in the aggressive price cutting from retailers that aim to make the Rock Band and instruments package as attractive in the European space as they are in the United States.

On the other hand, Guitar Hero is aiming to simulate more instruments in the fourth installment of the series, which is now in development. There are plans to include vocals and drums in the game and even a second guitar. Such a move would mean that Guitar Hero became much more similar to Rock Band, attempting to create a whole band simulation of music rather than focusing on the guitar parts.

And the future might bring more exclusive deals like the one done with Aerosmith, that could see gamers get both Rock Band and Guitar Hero so that they can have access to tracks from bands that signed exclusive deals regarding their songs.