So, enough talk about music focused on video games. Here's some news on those video games focused on music!
This year marks the 10 year anniversary of the most popular line of Rhythm based video games. The Bemani series turns a decade old this year, celebrating it's first rhythm game, Beatmania, released back in 1997. The following year, Konami released 3 more games into the genre including Dance Dance Revolution, Pop'n Music, and Guitar Freaks. After it's 10 years of life, how is the Bemani series coming along? This past AOU2007 shows us some previews into the near future of Konami's highly praised Bemani series.
-Beatmania IIDX 14: Gold was displayed this year, which may not be any surprise. The REAL surprise however is the state side testing location. Beatmania IIDX 14: Gold is going to have a US testing site in Naperville, IL. This is great news to fans of the IIDX series, and hopefully a sign of Konami bringing their "E-Amuse" online arcade service over to America.
-Pop'n Music 15: Adventure was another on display this year, being the first Pop'n Music to have motion character previews. Other then that, it's another installment to my personal favorite Bemani game.
-Guitar Freaks V4 / Drummania V4 was another to show at AOU2007, marking the 15th installment of Guitar Freaks, 14th of Drummania.
-Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA 2 was announced this year, setting straight the rumor of the 200 - 300 song upgrade that SuperNOVA was said to receive.
Here's some other news outside of AOU2007:
-Guitar Hero II for the Xbox360 is coming out next moth with 10 additional songs. It is said to have the full original Guitar Hero available for download on Xbox Live, and is said to be the game with the most downloadable content on Xbox Live. Online multi player will NOT be featured, however there will be Leader boards. Red Octane does imply the possibility of having online multi player in the future via Xbox Live update. Also announced was Guitar Hero for the Wii and DS. There was also rumored a Guitar Hero 1980's addition coming to the PS2, but no recent news has been heard.
-According to an article at DPad, Activision has begun to work on Guitar Villain and Drum Villain.
Thanks to Bemanistyle and Joystiq for information.