New Guitar Hero is on the way, but not the one you want

Activision is making a new Guitar Hero game...for mobile.

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It looks like a new Guitar Hero game is in the works, but it's not the one that we were all hoping for. Instead, it's Guitar Hero Mobile. Things get even tougher for Activision when the accidental leak came from its own Instagram account, and the advertisement uses AI (as a reminder, Activision is a multi-billion dollar video games publisher that made $7.5 billion in 2022).

"Play your way - Guitar Hero goes mobile," the ad reads. Activision had published the post 2 days ago and it's riddled with comments about the AI usage.

That's not a good look for Microsoft, a company who has been all-in on AI since investing $10 billion into OpenAI and going so far as to create their own AI that's capable of generating video games from scratch.

This isn't the first time Activision has been called out for using AI in or around its games. The company recently had to confirm that it used AI-generated assets in Call of Duty on PC, as per Steam's new AI mandate.

Transitioning from an accessory-based software-driven experience over to a monetized mobile experience is an interesting one for Microsoft, especially at a time when the company is aligning its games and franchises for better spreading across multiple platforms.

Now it's possible that this isn't the end of the Guitar Hero resurgence. What if the mobile game is just part of Microsoft's new plans for the series? Or maybe this is Activision's call?