Guitar Hero's Rock Band Future

Let's face it. Guitar Hero is really just Dance Dance Revolution for air guitarists and couch potatoes. Don't get me wrong: I'm not knocking it. It's a lot of fun; but that's what it is. It's just learning patterns and repeating them back. Rock Band is a significant expansion on the Guitar Hero concept; but it's still basically the same idea: Repeat patterns to win points. Easy to learn, somewhat difficult to master; but wholly uncreative. While it may feel edifying to some, I have to wonder: Ok, what's next? We have these instruments, with triggers and note selection keys. And our game platforms are fully broadband and media enabled...

What if you used the highly-engaging Rock Band guitar, drums and mic controllers, and even the song content; but added the ability for players to make up new "riffs" to customize the songs, or even write their own songs using riffs, hits, loops and phrases from other songs?

Now take it a step further: What if the broadband-enabled game decks were linked-and-synced over the 'Net so that ad hoc bands could have "jam sessions" using their own sets of riffs, samples, loops, etc? The game decks could fill in varying degrees of musicianship - including quantizing rhythms as needed. By turning up the skill dial, these "rock bands" could do more and more of the musicianship themselves, including drum fills, real vocals and guitar solos (!!). Uh oh. It's not sounding so good? Dial down the skill level a bit, and the game smooths out the rough edges, and adds in more rhythmic and melodic assistance. So, for example, guitar soloing could range from triggering samples of riffs to actually using the fret buttons and strum sensor to create various types of real solos in a particular style and key (which can be transformed and transposed automatically to suit the current style of music being played, of course).

Wondering about latency? The game decks are generating/playing back the loops, samples, etc. All that's being transmitted/received are the trigger events, and possibly vocal audio streams. Online PC games have been sync'ing hundreds rapid-fire trigger events per second for the better part of a decade now. Latency won't be a problem.

Once people own the controllers, and the game decks, and the broadband, it's but a small step to add features to future Rock Band/Guitar Hero game titles enabling kids and adults alike to participate in the thrill of creating their own music, and forming ad hoc "bands" with anyone on the planet, at any time. Why this hasn't already been done is what I'm wondering.