With Harmonix now owned by MTV and working on Rock Band, it was up to Neversoft to completely rebuild Guitar Hero for the third game. Luckily they didn't change much, but their adjustments are easy to notice. IGN got a chance to play the game at its current stage in development, and the first thing they noticed was that they sucked. A lot. Neversoft changed the timing sequence and they were strumming the notes at the wrong time for the first few games they played, although they said it didn't take long to readjust your movements. Furthermore, Neversoft also said they're still tweaking the timing issues.

IGN posted these gameplay videos and then pulled them down for some reason, but Arrogantics quickly managed to upload the "My Name is Jonas" video above and the "Slow Ride" video here. It's easy to see that the Star Power meter has changed, and that they've added a numerical note counter to the score interface to help players more. How do you like the changes so far? For the complete list of announced Guitar Hero 3 songs so far, check here.

Yesterday Activision gave us an update on their Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s game playlist, and now they're kind enough to give us an update on Guitar Hero III. Here's the songs they confirmed will be in Guitar Hero III when it releases this Fall:

• ORIGINAL RECORDINGS:
• "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour
• "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones
• "Cherub Rock" by Smashing Pumpkins
• "Sabotage" by Beastie Boys
• "The Metal" by Tenacious D
• "My Name Is Jonas" by Weezer
• "Knights of Cydonia" by Muse
• COVER SONGS:
• "Rock And Roll All Nite" as made famous by Kiss
• "School's Out" as made famous by Alice Cooper
• "Slow Ride" as made famous by Foghat
• "Barracuda" as made famous by Heart

"Knights of Cydonia" here I come. Activision also confirmed that Guitar Hero III will introduce two new wireless controllers -- a Gibson Les Paul guitar controller for the 360, PS3, and Wii, and a Gibson Kramer guitar controller for the PS2. Neversoft is also working on an online multiplayer battle mode that includes what some are calling "boss battles." With more songs and features than ever before, this series just keeps getting better and better. Which song are you looking forward to rocking out on the most?

Guitar Hero III and Rock Band are still pretty far off from being released, but we're finally starting to hear which bands will be involved. For now it's just one band, and they won't even tell us which song, but PSU is reporting that Queens of the Stone Age are signed up for both upcoming PS3 games in the future. They've made an appearance in the series before and should be fun to play more of. They're releasing a new album this June, with Guitar Hero III set for a Fall release, so maybe we'll get to play one of their new songs.

Guitar Hero's publisher RedOctane has officially committed to releasing one game every year, along with new content packs that are downloadable online regularly. When asked to elaborate, RedOctane's president and co-founder Kai Huang said: 

"We've got designs for different guitars, whether that's new shapes or new colors; we've got designs obviously for wireless, which we'll be releasing at the end of this year for all platforms; and then we're looking at really cool interesting finishes and different ideas that we can do with the guitar to make them a little bit more exciting, and in fact we're even looking at making some higher-end guitars that might be made out of real wood."

I'm sure their "buy our extra packs" pleadings will get annoying fast, although it's good to see the industry be able to respond so quickly to a growing fad. A few years ago we saw the same thing happen to the Tony Hawk skateboarding series, and before that was the Madden series. Give it a few years and you'll probably never want to play again, but I'm up for the ride if it involves improving the experience of this generation of gaming. Guitar Hero III is still planned for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, and PS2 by the end of the year.

Wiitar Hero brings out the Wiitard in band people. Apparently a lot of gamers were actually worried that RedOctane's Wii Guitar Hero III game was going to submit them to Wiimote and nunchuk gameplay. Here's some "no duh" news for you band burnouts:

"We are really excited about the Wii game because there are so many options for the Wii remote. However, you will play the game with a guitar peripheral and it will be similar to a guitar you've seen in the past." 

More importantly, he also confirmed that Guitar Hero III on the Wii will contain online play and downloadable music: awesome. And yes, we have seen what Guitar Hero played with a Wiimote looks like before: awful.