Guitar Hero World Tour singing, drumming, strumming

The rumours are all true: The cat's officially out of the bag for the fourth Guitar Hero. The new game will be called Guitar Hero World Tour, and will feature a microphone and a "genuine" electronic drum kit, along with a redesigned guitar peripheral.

Activision also boasts that Guitar Hero World Tour will have "the biggest on-disc selection" of music, and that all of the tunes available to take on will be master tracks. So far, no particular songs have been named, but the company has promised that offerings from artists Van Halen, Linkin Park, Sublime, and the Eagles will be included.

Localised content will also be available to download on all of the next-generation consoles--including the Wii. Of the three instruments, Activision is particularly touting its drum kit, which will have three drum pads, two raised cymbals, and a bass kick pedal. Apparently, it will have "velocity-sensitive drum heads with soft rubber construction to deliver authentic bounce back."

There will also be a new Battle of the Bands gameplay mode, in which eight players (two bands of four players each) will be able to play each other to see who's best. In the Band modes, four players can jam locally or online.

Also included will be Music Studio, a music-creation software suite with which wannabe songwriters can create digital music "from scratch." Those budding artists will then be able to share their recordings with chums online via GHTunes.

Rock Band, Harmonix's rhythm game, also features microphone and drum peripherals, and is due out in Europe tomorrow for the Xbox 360 only--other platforms will be released later this summer. Unlike Rock Band, all three peripherals in the latest Guitar Hero game will be wireless.

Guitar Hero World Tour is being developed by Neversoft for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The Wii version will be coming from Vicarious Visions, and the PlayStation 2 version from Budcat. All four versions are slated for release this autumn, although they have not yet been rated, and there are no pricing details.