'You Rock Guitar' to better gaming experience!

Gearing to tap the billion dollar music gaming industry, Inspired Instruments has unveiled a guitar ‘at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

The guitar controller, the first of its kind, will “let users rock right out of the box”, claims Inspired Instruments.

You Rock Guitar works not only with music video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band on gaming platforms like Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360, but can also be converted into a conventional guitar when plugged into a standard guitar amplifier.

Product features
The guitar features six metal "strings, a full fret board, but unlike conventional guitars there are no fretboard strings.

Instead, You Rock Guitar’s g-stik technology includes rows of pressure-sensitive lines that function like the strings of a real instrument. Further, the raised bars on the fret board give the feeling that one is playing a real guitar but unlike a conventional instrument, You Rock Guitar does not require tuning.

The product also comes with built-in sounds like acoustic, electric, rock, jazz, blues etc.

The connectivity to the guitar is very easy. Apart from the obligatory guitar plug, it will also feature a mini plug for connecting to iPod and MP3 players. The guitar can also be connected to a PC or Mac or can be used as a MIDI controller, enabling users to use any sound in the world.

You Rock Guitar also boasts of a Software Developer Kit, which will enable the video game developers to come up with new games, sounds and programs.

The neck is removable, allowing easily portability and storage.

The guitar is priced at $179.99 and is expected to hit the stores in the first quarter this year.

Readers’ reactions
The endless range of applications and ease of playability surely makes You Rock Guitar the most advanced music controller ever. In fact, there are many readers online who think the same.

A reader named Kenny goo commented on engadget.com, “it's a touch sensitive guitar that works like a guitar, sounds like a guitar, can output through an app like a guitar, that has tuning configurations that can you can switch on the go, *and* it doubles as a video game peripheral. I'm pretty sure that's a significant enough accomplishment.”

Another reader named tgalf stated on yourockguitar.com, “we’ll end up with a couple of these in my household. One for me and one for my learning daughter. The you tube demo;s are enough for me and the guitar looks good enough to invest in a decent tone module.”