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Pop stardom isn't a zero sum game, but it is often built on rivalries, real or manufactured. A bit of bad blood can be monetised, whether it's Katy Perry versus Taylor Swift, Blur versus Oasis or the Beatles versus the Stones. In the gladiatorial history of rhythm-action games, it has been Guitar Hero versus Rock Band, two franchises that enjoyed such accelerated success there seemed to be no time at all between them minting a new genre and completely saturating the market. Since 2010, both titles have been lying low - presumably in great mothballs of fire, plotting their returns. This month, they reignite their old rivalry with two carefully stage-managed comebacks. Guitar Hero Live seems to have veered in a new direction, pre-marketed as a hard reboot that ditches the classic logo, introduces a rejigged controller with double-decker buttons and deploys live-action video to mimic the experience of being sandwiched between Senseless Things and Ned's Atomic Dustbin on a drizzly music festival bill. But first out of the gate is Rock Band 4, produced by genre pioneers Harmonix and peripheral specialist Mad Catz. While it boasts a handful of new feature bullet-points to help tempt lapsed players into shelling out over £200 for the band-in-a-box bundle, Rock Band 4 is more of a thoughtful, streamlined consolidation of the franchise and its impressive legacy than a punky reinvention.
It's also a tangible retreat from the complexity of Rock Band 3, which shipped with two terrifying controllers, one with over 100 individual fret buttons and one which was basically just an electric guitar. That was an audacious attempt to create a generation of actual guitar heroes, shifting the focus from torrid rock fantasy and pushing the game into territory more akin to an Open University home-learning module. For Rock Band 4, the emphasis is firmly back on living out our culturally shared vision of the rock'n'roll dream, and it goes to great lengths to make the social experience as frictionless as possible.
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