Last week, a new wrinkle seemingly surfaced in the impending battle of the bands between Activision Blizzard’s Guitar Hero: World Tour and MTV Games’ Rock Band 2. According to an online report by cable network G4, Neversoft project director Brian Bright reportedly promised yet one more peripheral will be announced for World Tour. Popular speculation quickly settled upon a keyboard add-on, thanks to a tab for the same in the game’s Studio mode.

While G4 has subsequently retracted that article, stating the information was erroneous, Bright has returned to talk more about prospective new Guitar Hero peripherals. In a recent interview with gaming blog Joystiq, Bright addressed the possibility of the much-speculated keyboard controller, and why it won’t be happening in World Tour.

"There are reasons why we haven’t included a keyboard controller," said Bright. "Not all of our songs have keyboard parts, so we didn’t want someone to come into a game, pick up the keyboard controller, and then have nothing to do in any of the songs that are selected. We wanted a big mix of music in World Tour and adding a keyboard controller would either have limited our choices, or the players’."

Not to entirely squash gamers’ hopes to tickle the polymer ivories, however, Bright mused, "A keyboard controller deserves to be introduced with its own game. This is something we’re thinking about."

That thought process isn’t a new development. Even before Activision officially announced it had acquired the Guitar Hero license, as well as publisher RedOctane, in May 2006, the publisher filed an application to trademark the title "Keyboard Hero" with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

By TomM_GScom