The 2007 release of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock has proven to be the highest-grossing retail game ever, according to Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith.

Guitar Hero III crossed $1 billion in sales during the 2008 during the holiday season, Griffith revealed during an Activision CES presentation, as reported by Edge Online.

Griffith claimed that Guitar Hero III is the first single game to hit the $1 billion milestone at retail. It was released on PC, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3 and Wii, with Neversoft on the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, Vicarious Visions on Wii, Budcat on PS2, and Aspyr on PC.

The success of the series has also lead to greater success for the bands it helps promote, with data-tracking firm Nielsen reporting that after a band appears in Guitar Hero, download sales of the band's songs jump between 15% and 843%.

"Listen, I can't keep up with this shit," complained Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich in response to the internet pointing out that the Guitar Hero III DLC version of the band's new album Death Magnetic is of better quality than the CD on store shelves.

Speaking to Blender, Ulrich sounded much more educated on the issue than he gave himself credit for. "You gotta remember, when we put out '...And Justice for All,' people were going, 'What happened to these guys, this record? ... It sounds like it was recorded in a fuckin' garage on an eight-track.' And now '...And Justice for All' is sort of the seminal Metallica record that supposedly influenced a whole generation of death-metal bands."

As for the new record, Ulrich defended album producer Rick Rubin who allegedly "compressed" the record, sacrificing ... Read more

Internet audiophiles have discovered that the Guitar Hero version of Metallica album Death Magnetic is of better quality than the retail CD recently released by label Universal--and they have science to back it up.

"The CD version ... has been heavily compressed, limited and/or clipped, and sounds massively distorted as a result," said recording industry mixing engineer Ian Shepard in a blog post relayed by Wired.

The Guitar Hero version, on the other hand, uses a fuller dynamic range, as illustrated by a soundwave comparison pictured above. The more dynamic Guitar Hero version is more likely to resemble the songs as recorded by the group.

In this case, "compression" does not refer to data compression like MP3 files, but rather a "part of the 'loudness war,'" a recording industry technique in which the music's dynamic range (the range from soft to loud) is squished together to make music sound as loud as possible.

The technique, commonly used in TV commercials, means that the retail CD is ten decibels louder than the $18 Guitar Hero III DLC, or twice as loud to the human ear.

Three new tracks from the face-melting epic metal band DragonForce are coming to Neversoft's Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock as downloadable content on August 21, according to the band's record label.

An update on the Roadrunner Records website reveals the three tracks as:

• "Heroes of Our Time"
• "Operation Ground and Pound"
• "Revolution Deathsquad"

Though Guitar Hero III publisher Activision has yet to deliver explicit confirmation of the tracks, the Thursday, August 21 date provided by Roadrunner does fit with the company's usual DLC release schedule on the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace.