Much Respect to Led Zeppelin

Very true! You want to play like Jimmy Page? Learn guitar, not some video game controller.

I kind of get what you're saying here Alvee but personally I believe a CD or a DVD is a much better tool of exposure for music. And yes a very, very small appreciation for what's involved in creating the music could be possible in these "games". A 21 fret guitar has 126 individual notes, a Guitar Hero "Guitar" has like 4 or 5 notes, right? My major beef isn't with bands/musicians trying to make a dollar but instead with the lack of young people buying musical instruments. Instead the youngsters are spending their(or their parents) money on video games. I cringe to think of the image 30years from now people buying a ticket to watch a video game concert!?!? The newspaper headline would read " Johnny so and so has the two fastest thumbs in the universe!"
I guess I'm just old fashioned in the modern electronic movement.

I've got to disagree with my friend SouthPaw here. While I also detest video games and the wasted hours spent on them (and I am the father of a 16 yo vidiot), I believe that guitar hero in particular has increased CD sales and has likely increased interest in kids wanting to play a real guitar (like my son does).

An excerpt from a USA Today article:

A look at Nielsen SoundScan data for a dozen Guitar Hero II songs found that 11 out of 12 had increased sales in 2007, including:

• Cheap Trick's Surrender nearly tripled from 58,000 digital sales in 2006 to 161,000 in 2007.

• Kiss' Strutter went from 11,000 to 63,000 sold.

• The Pretenders' Tattooed Love Boys rose from 5,000 to 16,000.

• Only Danzig's Mother showed a drop, from 28,000 to 16,000.

"A lot of it is the classic guitar-type rock stuff form the Skynyrds to the new big monster bands like Queens of the Stone Age and Wolfmother," says Mike Davis of Universal Music (Bon Jovi, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Who). "Old and new with the classic rock sound seems to be the stuff that is doing super well. … It's a pretty hot subject these days."

And look at these stats of actual guitar sales:

2006         2,991,260    -9.6%    $1,151,290,000     -4.1%    $372
2005     3,302,670     0.2%     $1,158,592,050     13.3%      $350
2004     3,302,670     41.0%     $1,022,861,000     13.3%      $309
2003     2,341,551     20.5%     $903,261,000     -1.9%     $386
2002     1,942,625    11.4%    $921,057,000      -.13%     $529
2001     1,742,498     5.6%     $922,280,000      -0.1%    $529

A pretty impressive increase in '04 and '05 when guitar hero first came out. It's just numbers, with millions being introduced to music by guitar hero, even if only a small percentage pick up a real guitar, it leads to an increase.

More importantly for me, my son started to appreciate "good" music from these games (or maybe it just became cool to like Dad's music), before that he was really getting into the hip hop rap crap that I couldn't stand!!

Guitar hero's fun for about 30 minutes... then becomes pointless and repetitive. That said, I'm glad Zeppellin's not doing one. Not really surprised at aerosmith, but slash kind of dissapointed me

All You Need is Love

My problem here is that I can see both sides of this coin. Yes, I'd rather young people would pick up an actual guitar, but I can also see how this can get youngsters interested in guitar in the first place. However, I must also say that there is no greater inspiration than seeing a musician create the magic of music at first hand. I am one of those really sad guys who could sit in a pub and watch someone play guitar ALL NIGHT. Even if they're not that good, they're up there doing what I don't have the guts to do. YET.

I couldn't watch someone playing a video game all night. So I agree with you on that respect.

Is it just me or did I just talk myself round to your side of this discussion?

Thanks for the encouragement, Southpaw. This reminds me (in a roundabouit way) of family get togethers. When I go to my brothers or sisters for an evening of good old fashioned drinking and singing, the karaoke games usually get fired up on the games system. Great fun. But when they come to mine and I say, "Let's get the karaoke on", it's the guitar that comes off the wall and a great time is had also.

Guess which I prefer?

I have... I actually thought it was pretty fun, although had nothing to do with actual guitar playing. But like I said after about 20 minutes I'm bored with it.

All You Need is Love

Got to agree with last rebel here. Yeah I@ve played it and it was fun. Nothing like a real guitar and got bored after a short while. I'd rather stink at playing my guitar than stink at kidding on I'm playing my guitar.

After some further research I find they have been more relaxed about giving songs to Tv and Comercial ventures in reacent years,  But they did have a rep for not licencing songs out.

One thing I found that was kind of cool is a rollercoaster.   This would be a heck of alot better than a video game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led_Zeppelin_-_The_Ride