When Musical Instrument meets Mobile (Incident gTar: Towards the next-generation of Guitar Hero)

Most of readers may be aware of the name called Guitar Hero.

It was the most successful game during the last decade in terms of ROI (return on investment), degree of impact on the game businesses, huge fans obsessed with the game, and even on the gross revenues during the 6 consecutive years since 2005.  Guitar Hero enabled a new type of business model that the gamers require to buy their tangible musical controllers even though they look very likely 'fake' guitars and drums, and it is necessary to buy more titles and songs to play new songs using their tangible instruments.  Because of Guitar Hero, very newbies could be familiar with real guitars, and they finally became a people who loves to have a real guitar and drums, not just the 'fake' ones.  Here is the first problem to solve.

Now users need more real, playable guitars than the ones only appealing with geeks and/or useful on the game consoles.  Also, they would like to "learn" how to play the real ones to practice themselves.  Here is the second problem.

Yeah, we know all the problems, and then the solution(s) would be quite prominent - provide a real or compatible guitar that can be useful for both gaming and learning, or also pitching against your lifetime competitor(s) just-in-time when you want to take positive attentions from your future partner(s)!  Here is the answer - Incident gTar - the next-generation of Guitar Hero.

Incident gTar (currently with iPhone)

This gTar (/gee-ta/) currently works with iPhone 3GS/4/4S, and the engineers are working with the iPhone 5, since they changed the size (vertical length) and dock pins.  Also, the engineers of Incident gTar confirmed that Android support is not far-away, since they can replace only the docking parts, and the application is quite simple to port from iOS to Android.


Then, what do you think is the most important as soon as we received the Incident gTar?  1) The same form factor as usual electric guitar?  2) Guided LED display for each note and chord for practice and learning?  3) Bunch of different playable songs on the mobile app?   The answer is yes, and the engineers provide all the necessary features for you!


Regarding 1), this gTar has the same form factor as usual electric guitars even though this is rather an 'electronic' guitar due to the connected and additional components with a Mobile phone.

Regarding 2), the guided LED will provide you a easy way to learn and practice the new songs, and it will wait for your correct play for each note and chord.  In this way, the gTar provide an interactive music playing experience that was never available before during the past music's history.

Last but not least, on 3), there is a dedicated mobile application so that users can select musics, record his/her playing, and download more musics from their ecosystem (currently in-progress).

Here are videos related to the Incident gTar, so if you're still hesitating, please take a look and s**t up and take your money to buy the gTar.  Currently the price is $399 at their store as a form of pre-order.

FYI, here is a summarized history of the Incident gTar. [Source1, Source2]

• In 2009, Idan Beck started a company called Incident, and 4 people joined, and they successfully built the prototype version of the gTar at the garage located in Cupertino. 
• In 2011, they received $745K as an early-stage investment from various partners including VCs and the individual investors. 
• In 2012~13, they additionally crawled $353K from their Kickstarter project. 

- written by ANTICONFIDENTIAL at SF, in April 13, 2013