This is almost one of those peanut butter and chocolate combinations. The team over at Activision recently released Guitar Hero 3 to major success. People just can’t get enough of this stuff. Well, they’re not just going to sit around while there’s a demand to serve. They’re working on the latest installment of the wildly popular franchise with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Edition. Yeah, that’s pretty cool and all if you’re a fan of both Guitar Hero and Aerosmith. However, what’s better than that? Say you are a fan of both those things and you’re also a fan of free stuff. Well, have I got a sweet deal for you. Activision is going to be giving away a free Guitar Hero 3 downloadable track, Aerosmith’s ‘Dream On’. Sweet.

Anyone that owns Guitar Hero® III: Legends of Rock will have the opportunity to download and jam to Aerosmith’s “Dream On.” The song will be available for free from February 16-18 on Xbox LIVE Marketplace for Xbox 360 and Playstation Store for the Playstation 3. For more information, visit guitarhero online.

This is great, however, I think it would’ve been much cooler to have the Aerosmith collection on Rock Band instead. That way I could belt out all the sweet lyrics from Steven Tyler. “DREAM ON, DREAM ON, DREAM OOOOON!”

You can also preorder the new edition now at GameStop.

Boom!

In useless lawsuit news the 80’s one hit wonder The Romantics lost there lawsuit to have Guitar Hero Encore sales halted. Activision’s great year just seems to be getting better and better with the favorable ruling. There is no ruling yet on whether or not they will have to pay any royalties or not to the band.

In case you don’t remember the band was claiming that the “cover version” of their song “What I Like About You” was to close to the original. If The Romantics were just trying to get some fresh press, that’s about all they’ve gotten so far, then job well done guys.

Also in Activision news their little tiff with Rock Band and Harmonix seems to be a matter of money. Activision said they would release the patch to make their guitars work with Rock Band basically if they get paid. Oh the power of the almighty dollar.

According to an article from Reuters, Activision had the top-selling video game in November with Call of Duty 4 which “killed the competition” by selling more than 2.01 million copies for the Xbox 360 and PS3.

And while we’re talking numbers, Nintendo’s Wii had the best month of it’s life to date with some 981,000 units sold.

Boom!

Good news PS3 owners, the patch that will allow you to use Guitar Hero 3 guitars for Rock Band is ready to go. Harmonix finished the patch and gave it to Sony for release. So why haven’t you gotten it yet? Harmonix reps posted this on their forum.

“Two weeks ago, Harmonix created a software patch for the Sony PLAYSTATION 3 version of Rock Band that allowed for guitar compatibility and support for third party peripherals, including enabling use of Activision’s Guitar Hero III controller with Rock Band. The compatibility patch was submitted, approved and had been scheduled for release by Sony on Tuesday, December 4. Unfortunately, Activision objected to the compatibility patch’s release. The patch remains with Sony, but we have been told that it will unfortunately not be released due to Activision’s continued objection.”

Well done Activision. I would be angry about this but it is just for PS3 owners. I think all the different guitar controllers should work if, and to me this is big, your not gonna make guitars available to purchase separate from the game. But once again PS3 owners get screwed.

In the wake of the big merger between Activision and Blizzard there has been some game news.The fact sheet that came along with the merger, lists some upcoming games. It includes Call of Duty 5, another Tony Hawk game, Guitar Hero 4, a new James Bond title, a licensed Marvel game, a racing game from Blizzard and a sure to be crappy Dreamworks title.

All the gamers are super stoked to hear this?!? Is anyone surprised? First off the COD5 story isn’t new because we heard about it a month ago because Infinity Ward won’t be making it. Second of course another Tony Hawk game is coming. It is still making money right?

Nothing to get excited about…..YET!

The 2 giants of gaming, Activision and Blizzard have announced a merger. 18 billion is the number floating around that this thing is worth. Activision are the guys who give us Call of Duty, the Tony Hawk series, and Guitar Hero. While Blizzard is behind World of Warcraft. The merger should help Activision compete with EA. This morning they had a conference call with their stockholders. The highlights were that Blizzard would be acting as its own entity and that WOW would not be coming to consoles.

Blizzard and Activision have both had huge years revenue wise. The announcement boosted both their stock prices with Vivendi the owners of Blizzard reporting a 3% increase. Activision reports a 16% bump in their stock price.

Thanks Joystiq

If your like me you’ve been waiting for this game since it showed up at e3 this year and won most of the big awards. This game didn’t disappoint. I’ve had a hard time just starting this review because I didn’t know where to start.

COD2 was a great release title for the 360 from the guys at Infinity Ward. It of course was another in the long line of WW2 shooters and quite possibly the best. Unfortunately Activision went elsewhere for COD3 and it suffered. The reason Infinity Ward didn’t do COD3 you may ask? Because they were working on COD4.
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It only took seven days but Guitar Hero 3 is the newest member of the 100 million club. Not bad for a game not called Halo. Activision also says its the highest game in terms of shipping that they have ever done. I’m sure that the sweet commercials with Slash in them helped the most.

All in all it seems like a good quarter for Activision as they report 317 million in sells. While most of that came from GH3 they site Transformers and Quake Wars as big sellers also.

The next big sci-fi shooter isn’t coming out on Xbox 360, and maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know how much more the console can sustain. Haze is a very promising first person shooter set in a sci-fi universe. It’s “gimmick”, what sets it apart, is what the developer has termed “Nectar” which gives your player temporary special abilities, similar to some of the force powers seen in many Star Wars games.

Hopefully, at least for Sony’s sake, provides something different in the genre, or if nothing else gives players a reason to finally own a Playstation 3. The biggest problem is the same one with most titles on the PS3, it doesn’t come out until next year.

Check out the complete extensive hands-on preview at Bit-Tech.net

Try to hold back your tears. Sorry, it’s true, the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare beta is finally over. The team over at Infinity Ward sent out emails to all members of the games official site CharlieOscarDelta.com today. Infinity Ward says that the beta has been instrumental in fine tuning the gameplay and other aspects of the multiplayer experience. One of the more interesting developments from the beta has to be the new control scheme titled N0M4D in honor of it’s requester, Randy “N0M4D” Fitzgerald. If you want to check out all the details on that story there’s a Fox News interview with him up on YouTube here. If you want to know more about how the beta has effected the development the good folks at Infinity Ward have posted some info here. The full retail game is scheduled to come out November 5th in the U.S.

Boom!