Stage Tour

Stage Tour is currently confirmed to contain 5 core gameplay modes. The current modes included include Quickplay; which replicates the classic Guitar Hero and Rock Band experience albeit with the addition of modifiers (where the notes could be doubled, the notes could be shuffled around, the song can be sped up to 125% faster, etc.), Practice Mode; which as aptly stated, allows a player to practice parts of a song and allows them to slow down the track in order for them to learn the fretting and rhythm, Judgements, which is similar to Quickplay, but will have a different scoring system with scoring assigned to how accurately timed the notes are hit, Karaoke; which is a casual mode where the player and their friends can sing to the songs in the game with no score penalty, and Tour Mode; which will be a Rhythm Game take on the Roguelike genre of games in order to create an experience where no playthrough will be exactly the same due to the presence of power ups that you start with, can earn, and can purchase on each run.^[3]

Prior to the re-establishment of RedOctane Games and after the release of fan made games such as Clone Hero and YARG, the rhythm genre saw a mainstream resurgence with Fortnite Festival, which saw a partnership with CRKD to distribute guitar controllers and gamepads.^[4] Prior to the official announcement of Stage Tour, RedOctane Games partnered with Eidos-Montréal for motion capture and quality assurance, and Third Kind Games, who have developers that worked on prior Activision games including DJ Hero and Guitar Hero Live.^[5] Stage Tour is set to be distributed with guitar controllers themed after Gibson brands of guitars, first releasing with a Kramer model while also featuring multiple models of Gibson and Epiphone-branded guitars in-game in a multi-year partnership.^[6]

Stage Tour has been actively promoted by featuring demo versions of the game and guitars at events RedOctane Games have been present at, including a 7-song demo at IGN Live with the initial revealed setlist,^[7]an expanded demo of songs and prizes at San Diego Comic-Con^[8] and has a demo alongside an exhibition on some of the new modes featured in game present at Gamescom.^[9] Stage Tour has been revealed at Gamescom to be releasing with a full set of hardware bundles, including but not limited to just the game, but also a game + guitar (one or two) bundle deal, a game + full band deal (one guitar, one microphone, offered wired or wireless, and a drumming peripheral, with further options to include a secondary bass pedal and cymbals akin to the Rock Band pro cymbals).^[10]

Stage Tour will feature a soundtrack primarily focused around rock and metal music; the currently announced songs as of August 25 include:^{[11][12][13][14]}