Plastic guitars are back in vogue as new Guitar Hero wannabe announced

Guitar Hero may be be dead but a new studio, founded by some of the original creators, is launching a lookalike game this year.

Back when Xbox was first courting Activision Blizzard, it was clearly implied that the acquisition would lead to the revival of the Guitar Hero series, which has been seemingly dead since 2015.

So far, nothing of the sort has come out of the arrangement. If anything, Epic Games has done more to revive the concept by enlisting Guitar Hero’s original developer Harmonix to make Fortnite Festival, a rhythm action game that’s compatible with the same plastic guitar peripherals that used to clutter peoples’ living rooms.

Now, another Guitar Hero clone has been announced, alongside a brand new guitar controller – one that’s also being created by veterans of the series.

Named simply the Sound System, the game is in development at a new studio called Echo Foundry Interactive, which was founded by Marcus Henderson and Lennon Lange.

Henderson is a musician who served as the lead guitarist on the Guitar Hero games, while Lange worked as a producer on not just that series but related spin-offs like Band Hero and DJ Hero.

The game’s already scheduled to launch on PC via Steam this summer, with plans for PlayStation 5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch versions as well.

One look at the trailer and it’s very apparent it’s just Guitar Hero again (not that that’s a bad thing), with a promise of a curated setlist of songs, frequent content updates, and the ability to create and share your own music.

The announcement coincides with a new guitar peripheral called the InfinaKore Telecaster Edition Guitar Controller, from hardware company Drakong, which will be compatible with both Sound System and Fortnite Festival.

However, the Sound System trailer also mentions ‘classic peripherals,’ which hopefully means that some of your old Guitar Hero controllers will work just fine and you won’t need to go and buy a new one.

The likes of Guitar Hero and Rock Band popularised bespoke controllers shaped like instruments, which were extremely popular in the late 2000s, before Activision oversaturated the market.

The concept fell out of favour in the 2010s, alongside rhythm action games in general, and there’s never really been a comeback since then.

Don’t miss Gaming news! Add us as a Preferred Source

As a loyal GameCentral reader, we want to make sure you never miss our articles when searching for gaming stories. We have all the latest video games news, reviews, previews, and interviews, with a vibrant community of highly engaged readers.

Click here and tick Metro.co.uk to ensure you see stories from us first in Google Search.

There’s clearly still a market for it though, if other companies are making such peripherals, even if it’s hard to imagine it once again becoming a mass market phenomenon.

Although Guitar Hero, and successor Rock Band, are now dead franchises Ubisoft’s Rocksmith is still going. Although that’s more of a teching tool than a normal game, not least because it uses a real electric guitar.

It was eventually succeeded by a subscription service called Rocksmith+ in 2022. Surprisingly, that’s still going and seeing updates, having since added piano and keyboard learning.

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

MORE: Fable and Forza Horizon 6 will be in January Developer Direct but not much else

MORE: 2026 video game release dates for PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox and PC

MORE: New Life Is Strange sequel leaked and it’ll bring back a fan favourite character