Because it is not officially taking part in E3, Activision held an unofficial E3 press conference on Tuesday evening at an old church in downtown LA that has been converted into an open-bar sporting, catered affair, showing off its upcoming lineup. Company officials revealed at the event that the Xbox 360 version of “Guitar Hero: World Tour” will be compatible with the instruments for the first “Rock Band.” For obvious reasons, the “Guitar Hero” developers have not been able to test their new game with the approaching “Rock Band 2.” Other third-party guitar and drum controllers are expected to comply with “Guitar Hero: World Tour” as well.

Activision is not ready to address whether the instrument compatibility applies to Wii, PS2 and PS3 versions of “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band.”

The music editor will permit up to four tracks to be recorded at the same time. For drum players, different kits can be loaded, rendering different drum sounds. Drum loops are available for putting in the mix if you lack desire to play the drums. A very interesting aspect about loops is that they can even be activated and edited by the guitar peripheral.

The over 80 synthesizer sounds for the keyboard can be controlled with the guitar by raising and lowering the neck to change octaves. World Tour's community center for sharing your music and the album artwork you create for your songs is called Guitar Hero Tunes.

During the hybrid show-press release event, Activision also presented some new footage of the Quantum of Solace James Bond video game — will launch at the same time as the movie in November —, "Call of Duty World at War"" — which recreates World War II battles from the perspective of the Americans in the Pacific and Russians converging on Berlin — and some frames of the Wolfenstein project as well as "Spider-Man Web of Shadows".