Guitar Hero Mobile Stumbles with AI Launch Announcement

When it comes to fast-and-furious rhythm games, although the genre never really took off in the West, there was one huge exception: Guitar Hero. Now, this legendary franchise is set to make a return, and better yet, it's coming to the humble platform of mobile! However, right out of the gate, Activision managed to kneeslide right off the stage and into the orchestra pit.

The announcement for Guitar Hero Mobile was not carried by a trailer or even a press release, but instead by a blatantly AI-generated promotional image over on Instagram. As you might've predicted, the return of this legendary franchise is being overshadowed by the art, especially with another widely-reported instance of AI being used in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

As far as further information on what Guitar Hero Mobile will look (or sound) like, we don't really have much to go on. Although the famous series did come to mobile previously, this was nearly 20 years ago, as you can see below. So, I think we're all hoping for something quite impressive.

**Broken strings** As many have pointed out, the art used in the Guitar Hero Mobile announcement was egregiously bad, and not necessarily even created with more modern image generators. Suffice it to say, then, that Guitar Hero Mobile might be dead on arrival, especially with stiff competition like Space Ape's excellent BeatStar still being popular.

Ultimately, while I'm very excited by the idea of Guitar Hero making a return and can see huge potential for it working well on mobile, it's undeniable that Activision have really put their foot in it once more despite all the positives.

In the meantime, if you want to see what big waves other top franchises have made on smartphones, why not dig into the top 9 Final Fantasy games on mobile?