The overwhelming success of Red Octane's Guitar Hero was bound to lead to competitors. The only surprising facet is that it's taken Konami this long to mount a response. Konami's Guitar Freaks games have been around long before Guitar Hero was even a sparkle in someone's eye, however Konami hasn't really seemed motivated to try and bring the Bemani game to the United States. Hell, we've only just recently gotten a US version of Beatmania so we can see what all the fuss is about. Now that Konami has trademarked the name Guitar Revolution, we're assuming they mean to bring out a console version for the US.
Even though Guitar Freaks came first, in the US Guitar Hero has a huge head start in terms of mindshare. Guitar Hero also sports five buttons on their controller, up from Guitar Freaks' three. Do people want to take a step down in complexity? Guitar Hero also has a great selection of licensed music, one of the main reasons people enjoy the game so much. Guitar Freaks, like most Bemani games, relies on a lot of J-Pop to round out their catalog. If they want to compete, they're going to need to add more recognizable songs.
I played the arcade version of Guitar Freaks for the first time at E3 and had a great time—if you put a guitar controller in my hand I'm going to rock out—but it seems as if they have a lot of work ahead of them if they want to try to take down Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero makes it feel like you're playing in a grungy club or huge arena while Guitar Freaks looks like DDR with a guitar. I'm looking forward to seeing whether or not Konami will try to make Freaks a little different than their other brightly colored Bemani games in response to Guitar Hero's more realistic feel.
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