The holiday season is when all the action takes place in the video game business, and this year has already pitted Microsoft’s Xbox 360 against Sony’s PlayStation 3, and sleek new software against sequels like Halo 3, the New York Times reports.

But one of the most watched rivalries is between two games that are not first-person shooters or movie tie-ins. Instead, Activision’s Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and MTV’s Rock Band put players in the role of rock musicians and allow them to play along with songs by bands like Metallica and the Who.

Both titles could be important to an industry that is trying to reach out to adults, women and anyone lacking interest in a fighting game. Like Nintendo’s Wii, the Guitar Hero games have found a receptive mainstream audience, and the earlier versions sold a total of six million copies. In its first week of release, Guitar Hero III had sales of $115 million. Rock Band was released last Tuesday.

This virtual battle of the bands will also pit a mainstay of the industry, Activision, against MTV, a unit of Viacom, a relative newcomer to the game business but one with deep roots in the music world. In the long term, both Activision and MTV believe that the genre of “rhythm games” has the potential to attract a mainstream audience unmoved by the robots and race cars that have become industry staples.

Read the full New York Times story

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