Charles and Kai Huang, the two people most responsible for Guitar Hero existing in the first place, have joined RedOctane Games' special advisory board. That detail buried in the Stage Tour announcement tells you more about what this project is trying to be than any trailer could. This isn't a Clone Hero competitor built in a basement. RedOctane is swinging for the mainstream, and they've pulled in the people who built that mainstream once before.
Stage Tour is a four-player rhythm game built around the classic note-highway formula, with slots for Lead guitar, Groove/bass, Drums, and Vocals. The Steam page describes it as blending "familiar and accessible note-highway gameplay with new and exciting modern twists," which is exactly the kind of language you use when you don't want to scare off veterans or newcomers. A new Gibson Kramer guitar controller will ship in a bundle with the game, and a drum peripheral is also in development, likely arriving before launch. Gamepads and keyboards will work too, but let's be honest: nobody's getting nostalgic over tapping a keyboard.
The Gibson partnership is the other big piece here. RedOctane has locked in a multi-year deal covering the Gibson, Epiphone, and Kramer brands, which means officially licensed guitar designs baked into the game itself. It's a smart move. Guitar Hero's plastic Gibsons were half the fantasy, and having the real brand in the room gives Stage Tour a level of authenticity that Fortnite Festival, for all its crossover muscle, can't really replicate.
The Setlist Question Nobody Can Answer Yet
No tracklist has been confirmed. That's the elephant on the note highway. The FAQ on the official site confirms the game will lean into rock and metal, and the reveal trailer featured "Terminator Oscillator" by Static-X, which is a reasonable signal of the direction. Artists who want to license their music can apparently reach out directly, which is an interesting approach. Whether that produces a setlist worth buying plastic instruments for is the question Stage Tour can't answer until it does.
The other question is sustainability. RedOctane is explicitly framing this as a long-term platform, not a game with sequels. "This is not about a sequel treadmill," the announcement blog states, pointing toward seasonal content and live events as the expansion model. That's the right lesson to take from the Guitar Hero collapse. Between 2008 and 2009, Activision and Harmonix flooded shelves with so many SKUs that they buried the genre themselves. A live-service approach carries its own risks, but at least it's a different set of risks.
The r/CloneHero and r/Rockband communities have already flagged concerns about the cartoon art style and character animations looking stiff, which is fair criticism to raise early. RedOctane says they're working with rhythm game community members during development, and a closed alpha is scheduled for late spring or early summer. Sign-ups for that alpha should open soon, according to the official site. Holiday 2026 is the current target for PC and a "wide range" of consoles, with specific platforms still unconfirmed.
Fortnite Festival has the install base. Clone Hero has the hardcore fans. Stage Tour needs to find the people in the middle: the ones who still have a dusty guitar controller in a closet and haven't had a reason to dig it out in fifteen years. Whether a Gibson Kramer bundle and a Static-X trailer is enough to get those people off the couch is the only metric that matters.
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