Guitar Hero Live is ditching the DLC model of music games past in favor of an intriguing new system.
In the online Guitar Hero TV mode, players will be able to play unlimited songs from a number of channels hand-crafted by the developers at Freestyle Games. Like heavy metal? There will be a heavy metal channel filled with songs to explore. Prefer classic rock? You'll have a playlist to enjoy.
That's all free of charge, and playing songs in the various playlists will earn players in-game currency. That currency can then be used to play an individual song from a massive list of tracks that will be continually updated throughout the game's life.
Freestyle Games announced their plans in a recent blog post:
"In GHTV, you no longer buy a song in the old DLC way — you don't have to buy a song to sample or play it. You can play any channel for as long as you want. As you play in the channels, you earn in-game currency which quickly adds up, so you can get tokens to play any song from the GHTV library on-demand. And we're going to load you up with a bunch of play tokens the first time you play and as you rank up. The more you play, the more you earn. This freedom of choice wasn't offered in the past. We hope people will love it."
For those who run out of credits or just want more freedom to choose the next song, you'll be able to purchase an unlimited access pass, which grants you access to every song in the game for a limited time.
To break it down: playing songs is free forever when playing the playlists, but it will cost in-game currency to play individual songs. Or you can spend real money for access to every song for a limited time. It's unclear at this time whether players will be able to buy in-game currency for real money via microtransactions, but it seems like a definite possibility.
That said — in theory, a player should never need to spend money. As long as the game supplies the in-game currency at a reasonable rate, it sounds hard to complain about the package Freestyle Games is offering. The ability to play an unlimited number of songs via a Spotify style playlist sounds like a dream come true for rock lovers who are always looking for something new to play to.
Guitar Hero Live releases on October 20 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Wii U.
Be sure to follow T-Lounge on Twitter and visit our Facebook page.
