Ubisoft Game “Rocksmith” Will Teach You To Play The Guitar

In a move that flies in the face of the recent trend to cut back in the poorly-performing music game section of the market, Ubisoft have today announced a new guitar title – Rocksmith. The game aims to teach players how to play a real, full-sized electric guitar. Labelling the title a “game with benefits”, they are looking to create a new genre, rather than to fill the void left by the recently cancelled Guitar Hero franchise – this aims to be far more focused on learning real music than previous guitar games.

Due out in September for Xbox 360 and PS3, the game will come with a standard instrument input jack that will allow you to plug “most” electric guitars directly into a the console. There will be no Nintendo Wii support for this title, unlike previous music games. And on top of that, Ubisoft is negotiating with Gibson and other guitar manufacturers to sell a bundle of the game that will include an electric guitar. So either use your own instrument, or splash out for the package which comes with the axe and will likely cost around $200 (£125).

So the game will see players strumming real strings, rather than pressing buttons, and looks to capture a chunk of the market of people who always wanted to learn to play guitar, but never managed to stick with it. The game will detect how your playing progresses through the console and then adjust the learning curve to suit your level. Ubisoft’s senior VP of marketing Tony Key states that “Guitar Hero is a party game – Rocksmith is a music experience… the dream of playing guitar compared to how many follow through – there’s a big gap. We will create a new generation of guitar players.”

Rocksmith is due to be released Sep 2011 on PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 and will include 45 tracks from a range of artists including The Rolling Stones, Nirvana and David Bowie.