Van Halen next to get Guitar Hero edition

Well, you might as well jump: Following in the footsteps of Aerosmith and Metallica, Van Halen is the next band in line to get a shot at a special edition of the Guitar Hero franchise.

There's no word yet about what songs will be included or even which incarnations of the band will be featured in the track lineup (although the inclusion of "some of Van Halen's greatest hits" is promised), but additional material on tap from other acts is slated to include songs from Queen ("Bohemian Rhapsody" please please please!), Weezer, blink-182, The Offspring, and Queens of the Stone Age.

And if the promise of "Eruption" on Guitar Hero isn't enough, Activision has three more music titles on tap as well. The upcoming games include: Guitar Hero 5, another update to the series that will offer new features like the ability to change instruments and difficulty levels (or even drop players altogether) in the middle of a song without restarting. Then there's Band Hero, a family-friendly version of the four-piece-combo game. And, of course, the long-awaited DJ Hero, which now finally has a controller design being shown off.

All four titles (yes, four new music games from one publisher) will arrive before the end of the year, so start scraping up your change.

And as if all of that's not enough, Activision says it's considering expanding the Guitar Hero brand from video game consoles to a reality television show and possibly a real-life concert tour. How either of those would work I have no idea (would they just play the game on stage? and people would pay to watch it? really?), but I guess if you can turn World of Warcraft into a movie (also speculated in the linked article), you can probably do just about anything.

All of which begs the question: Hasn't Activision heard that people are getting a little bored of playing all these rythym and music titles? Ah well... maybe they're just taking a cue from  David Lee Roth and living for the moment while the good times still roll. As Diamond Dave himself would say: Yeeeeeaaaahhheeeeahahhheeeeaaaaaah!