In a recent interview with Activision’s CEO in the May edition of Conde Nast Portfolio magazine, Bobby Kotick answers a few questions that lead to more questions. Are we looking at drums and singing in the next release of the GH franchise ? How do you sort through thousands and thousands of local bands to add to a game that will have mass appeal? Here’s an excerpt of the 4 page interview (click the link above to read the entire piece):

Conde Nast: Guitar Hero is huge—with more than $1 billion in sales since it was introduced in 2005. Essentially, it lets people play along on a fake guitar to real songs. Given that the Universal Music Group is part of Vivendi, will any special emphasis be given to its songs and artists?

Kotick: One of the big benefits will be access to the Universal library. Guitar Hero takes an artist to a whole different place in the popular culture right now. Downloads on iTunes take off. The artist’s relevance and importance to 17-year-olds change in a way that you could never get in any other medium. Forty percent of its users are women. The age appeal is something we’ve never seen before—seven-year-olds who have no idea who Aerosmith is are playing the band’s music on Guitar Hero. So are 45-year-olds who spent a good portion of their lives following the band around.

CN: Where do you take the idea next?

K: It’s not just about guitars. We’ll include a lot of other instruments, vocals. It will help us expand internationally. It’s the first game we’ve had in which we can use local content and local bands

Note: By 2006, Activision had scooped up RedOctane, the makers of Guitar Hero. The acquisition cost $100 million, but resulted in $820 million in revenue in 2007.