Original Guitar Hero publisher RedOctane has been revived, and the new version of the studio is apparently already hard at work on a brand new rhythm game.
As revealed on the studio's website, the new version of RedOctane will be helmed by Simon Ebejer, who worked as production director on a number of Guitar Hero titles while employed at Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock developer Neversoft.
The announcement also says that the newly-revived RedOctane "includes creators and developers who helped create and scale Guitar Hero and DJ Hero nearly two decades ago", and that newer developers and creatives from the rhythm gaming space are also joining the studio.
Charles and Kai Huang, the brothers who originally started RedOctane back in the 2000s, will "join a special advisory board" for the revived iteration of the studio, which will bring "deep heritage and insight" into RedOctane's "future direction".
Ebejer says that RedOctane is currently working to deliver "the next evolution in rhythm gaming". In an accompanying blog post, RedOctane's Lee Guinchard says the project "won't be Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, Guitar Freaks or Rock Band", but "something new".
Guinchard, along with several other staffers joining the ranks of the new RedOctane, is part of the CRKD team, a studio that creates modern rhythm game peripherals for old-school Guitar Hero games, as well as the likes of Fortnite Festival and Clone Hero.
It's not entirely clear whether RedOctane's new game will utilize one of these peripherals (or, indeed, whether it'll come with an entirely new piece of hardware), but given Guinchard and company's expertise, it would seem odd if that wasn't the case.
Whatever RedOctane creates, let's hope it makes more of a splash than Activision's own attempts to revive the Guitar Hero franchise, which have fallen flat on at least two occasions over the last ten years or so.
