Guitar Hero Live is a 2015 music video game developed by FreeStyleGames and published by Activision. It is the first title in the Guitar Hero series since it went on hiatus after 2011, and the first game in the series available for 8th generation video game consoles (PlayStation 4, Wii U, and Xbox One). The game was released worldwide on 20 October 2015 for these systems as well as the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and iOS devices including the Apple TV.
The title is considered a reboot of the series; instead of using a five-button guitar-shaped game controller, the game shipped with a six-button controller, arranged in two rows of three aimed to provide more realistic fingering positions than the five-button controller. The game includes 42 songs on the game's disc, presented in sets using full motion video taken from the first-person perspective of the lead guitarist as the background visuals to create an immersive experience. Guitar Hero Live does not use traditional downloadable content to expand the game and is not backward compatible with previous songs from Guitar Hero games. Instead, the game includes the online Guitar Hero TV (GHTV) mode modeled after music video channels that players can jump in or out of at any time, playing through ongoing songs in a curated fashion. GHTV, through in-game rewards and microtransactions, supports the ability to play any song in the library, perform Premium shows where the newest tracks to GHTV will be found, or even unlock all features for a 24-hour period as part of a Party Pass. Two hundred songs were available at the release of the game, with more added over time, averaging about six brand new songs each week.
FreeStyleGames selected on-disc songs from a wider variety of music genres beyond rock music as to provide challenging guitar tracks for players, while their approach to licensing of songs for GHTV enabled them to attract more musical acts to offer their music. Game reviewers found the on-disc soundtrack to be weak as it focused too much on more recent musical acts, while praising the wider variety across a larger time period that GHTV offered.