Several good previews of Guitar Hero World Tour emerged this weekend:

1. IGN Guitar Hero World Tour Preview
2. GameSpy Guitar Hero World Tour Preview
3. GameSpot Guitar Hero World Tour Preview

I highly recommend reading the IGN article as it had the best information, but I’ll summarize so you don’t have to.

The biggest news was probably the first detailed pictures of the new guitar! It’s a fairly substantial upgrade over the Les Paul, which was already excellent.

It’s definitely larger than previous fake plastic guitars — probably a nod to the Rock Band Stratocaster, which more accurately mimics the size of a real guitar.

It also contains a touch-sensitive pad on the neck!

What will this be used for? GameSpy’s Sluggo explains:

The big new addition is what Neversoft is calling the “touch strip.” Essentially, it’s a touch-sensitive section of the guitar neck right next to the standard, multicolored buttons. The touch strip doesn’t stand out from the rest of the neck, so you might not even realize it’s there if you’re not familiar with your new hardware. What this touch strip does is act as a multipurpose tool for several inputs and effects. One use is finger-tapping guitar solos, but you can also swipe your finger along it, side-to-side, to mess with the sustain on your held notes and provide a sound very different from the whammy bar. You can also use it to affect the synth sounds during songs with heavy keyboard usage.

The start/select and star power buttons have been moved to the “bridge” of the guitar along with a new rectangular “star power activation” button. It not only looks more authentic, you can palm the star power button and activate while playing, if you’re not into the whole “tilt the guitar up” thing.

The Xbox button is also reimagined as a knob, again, for a more authentic feel.

The faceplates and detachable neck are clearly preserved, from what I can see of the photo. I am a fan of the detachable neck, even though it can cause button connectivity issues, because it allows us to have custom faceplates. Here’s hoping they’ve redesigned the neck connection to be more reliable.

The microphone is unremarkable. Nothing to report there; your typical USB handheld microphone. It sure would be nice if the microphone was wireless. It’d also be nice if it had built in controller functions, so the vocalist didn’t have to locate a controller every time he or she wants to make a selection. But not this time, unfortunately!

A few new bits of information on the drums:

• The cymbal “pie slices” can be rotated and repositioned to taste.
• To activate star power on drums, hit the yellow and orange cymbal at the same time.
• Drum heads are 8 inches, slightly larger than the 7 inches of Rock Band drums.
• Drums have a silicone surface, so they’re (reasonably) quiet right out of the box; no modifications required.
• Wireless! Yay!
• Speed sensitive; slam and you get a loud note. Tap and you get a soft note. This will make drumming much more expressive.

On to the game itself:

• Brings back all the characters from Guitar Hero II, in addition to the ones featured in Guitar Hero III — hello Clive and Pandora!
• Added sixth bass note on top of the five colored buttons; you can strum with no buttons held for an “open strum”. This should make playing bass more interesting, I hope.
• Five careers: Guitar, Bass, Drums, Vocals, Band.
• Boss battles have been restructured as call and response, and their role minimized in the main game. Thank goodness they listened to the criticism on that one. Boss battles in Guitar Hero III were universally hated by most gamers, including me.
• New “Beginner” difficulty that’s even easier than easy, suitable for children or total neophytes. This’ll be a nice option for parties and people who protest they can’t possibly play well enough to join in.
• If you get stuck on a song in the career mode, you can downgrade your skill level without restarting the whole career. Nice.
• Quickplay will now earn you cash and bonuses for your character, as long as you’re logged in. Even more reason to practice!
• You can create song sets as “gigs” of up to seven songs for your band, rather than being kicked back to the song select screen after each song.

There’s also a very complex music studio for creating your own “songs”, minus vocals. I applaud the effort, and it looks impressively complex, but I’m skeptical this will be much more than a fairly involved toy. I doubt it will result in anything musically interesting for the average player. I’m much more interested in a strong collection of DLC.

Based on these previews I’m really looking forward to Guitar Hero World Tour. Many of the features they’ve announced are features people have been clamoring for in the still-unannounced Rock Band 2.

In particular, the hardware looks outstanding, and it exploits the one big weakness of Rock Band — the sub-par, flaky guitar and drum hardware. Somehow, I’m doubting Rock Band 2 will include any new hardware, so the Guitar Hero franchise appears to be solidly extending its lead in this area.