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This is not the first game to attempt this: see the (still) unreleased Guitar Rising or the open source Little Big Star, now abandoned. I saw a guitar tutor program at CES this year that also attempts it.

None work very well. I played with Little Big Star for a while with my guitar through a POD, and while it could recognize individual notes, chords were missed a lot. The CES guitar tutorial program actually sucked- I was amazed at how bad it was. They attempted to hide it by only giving you an aggregate score at the end without ever telling you *where* you made the errors, but even the salesdroids admitted that playing perfectly wouldn't get you a 100% since it couldn't recognize correct playing all the time

Guitar Rising was first to announce a real guitar game back in 2008 but never released, presumably because of problems with the polyphonic pitch detection.

The first real guitar game released was LittleBigStar, back in 2009. LittleBigStar supported a wide range of instruments, including guitar and bass, and loaded mp3s and standard tablatures in different open formats. It had a good momentum and indie developers made different kinds of musicgames, which they called MusicWare, but it was closed down two years ago. By those measures RockSmith is hardly new...

The LittleBigStar team decided to go commercial, presumably because they had success cracking the polyphonic pitch detection nut. They released Offbeat guitarist which is freeware, support open formats and works great.

In 2009 Disney claimed to have found the holy grail of music gaming: Disney Star Guitarist but it was never released.

In 2010 Rise of the SixString was released with a guitar-controller hybrid.

Holiday 2010, Harmonix showed RockBand 3 pro-mode with the Squier Strat Controller. It went for sale in BestBuy stores in March 2011.

Holiday 2011, UbiSoft claim to have found the big new thing...

Well I think its great when any game can impart a skill people could use in real life the existing and even the Rockband 3 "Real Guitar".
Arn't real guitars IMHO.
Its like the final step but lets hope that more than a couple of people get hooked and make some good music.

P.s. isn't this a bit like http://www.guitarrising.com/ Which seems like its going to be vapour-ware when it comes out.

They need to let you plug your own guitar into the game as a controller. That's a game I'd play.

You might be interested in Guitar Rising.

There have been others promising the same thing, but so far nobody has delivered anything close to how awesome this could be.

Look into Guitar Rising and LittleBigStar.

Now, with a better sensor system, you have another problem - it's still just a game, the players don't really know how to sword-fight.

I thought that increased realism was part of the point, though. I'd be interested in a swordfighting game that required learning something resembling a real-world skill, so that I'm prepared to... uh, battle skeleton warriors.

What people want is the illusion of doing something they can't do. Guitar Hero is popular because it feels like you're playing a guitar even though the skills aren't really anything like what a real guitar requires. Increased realism doesn't have much to do with it - presumably if people really wanted to play guitar they'd go to a music teacher, if they really wanted to learn how to handle a sword they'd take up fencing or whatever.

Sword-fighting is always going to be unrealistic in a game because there is no resistance in the "target". How can you be parried? It doesn't matter how good the controller is, it's just not going to be a realistic experience.

I guess the test of this reasoning is, would there be a market for a Guitar Hero imitator where the skills carry over somewhat to actual guitar, instead of being basically Simon with music?

That game already exists: Guitar Rising. since you obviously haven't heard of it I think we can assume that there is in fact not much of a market for it.

http://www.guitarrising.com/

Speaking as someone who's played around with my friend's cheap guitars and toyed with the idea of getting one myself... what is it about a cheap guitar that makes it "difficult and painful" to learn on?

Personally, I haven't bought myself one because 1) I don't have a lot of time for yet another hobby, and 2) I do get frustrated just trying to do very basic stuff on guitar as it is.

Finally, whatever happened to these guys? http://www.guitarrising.com/

See: http://www.guitarrising.com/
They've been doing that stuff for a while. With an actual guitar
And they say on their website that the game is going to be released this year. I seriously can't wait.. xD

http://www.guitarrising.com/

This will be awesome if done correctly. My only hope is that we see this kind of technology become available for other instruments, as well.

That nobody has mentioned Guitar Rising yet or Little Big Star yet.

You are probably thinking of Guitar Rising. The demo video looks wicked but it smells like vaporware right now.

http://www.guitarrising.com/index.html

But there is a similar game coming out by Disney that will most likely actually be released (summer of 2009). Since it's from Disney I dont think there will be any Slipknot and Slayer songs.

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/01/finally-a-guita.html

http://www.guitarrising.com/index.html Here's a version that lets you use a real guitar.

http://www.guitarrising.com/

And lets not forget the guitar game for the guys who actually play, Guitar Rising.

You mean Guitar Rising?

http://www.guitarrising.com/

it's actually already happening:
http://guitarrising.com/

They are already there.

http://www.guitarrising.com/

Sounds a bit like myself really, I tend to go through phases of being really interested in something and then it just fades out. With guitar that's happened a few times I think, though not too much recently (mostly because I ended up being the drummer in a band me and my friends had, so one of my friends has actually used my current guitar way more than I have!).

At least while your son is playing Guitar Hero it will be building up his rhythm, dexterity and finger strength, so next time he tries guitar it will be that much easier!

Someone above linked to http://www.guitarrising.com/ . That is the kind of thing that could encourage people to play more often, as they can 'beat' songs rather than just learn them. It's maybe slightly distracting from the musical appreciation part, but it's nice too to have a tangible rating on how well you are able to play if you see what I mean - gives you a sense of your progress and then you'll be less likely to give up/get bored. When that game comes out it's quite likely that I'll be playing my guitar regularly again :)

;)

especially with the hot debate over whether or not it hinders people's musical instruction."

No matter the outcome of THAT debate, I think no one can dispute that this upcoming game teaches people to play for real. I'm going to get it. :)

You are thinking of Guitar Rising.

http://www.guitarrising.com/

An early version of this game was playable at GDC. It uses real tablature notation instead of a pseudo fretboard and didn't support whammy or chords yet. You simple plug a real guitar into a USB connected controller and start playing.

It is also very hard compared to Guitar Hero, as you would expect.