Today was the Launch Event for Guitar Hero III, held at Spotlight Live Night Club in New York City.

On hand were Kai Huang, president of Red Octane, as well as Jason Young, CEO of Ziff Davis. Young started off the event talking about how Digital Life had grown over the last few years, and spoke about how the first Guitar Hero had debuted at Digital Life four years ago. He then brought up an official from NYC to present Huang with a proclamation from the city declaring today Guitar Hero Day.

Huang then spoke briefly about Guitar Hero – mostly generic information that most of the readers of this site have heard over and over again for the benefit of people who had never really heard of or played the game. They then brought out someone to play one of the new songs – Lay Down by Priestess on expert to demo the game for everyone.

Also on hand were Corey Glover and Vernon Reid of Living Colour who had done the Master Track for Cult of Personality. They talked about being approached to do the track for Guitar Hero and how much they had enjoyed the game, and joked about how being able to play a real guitar didn’t translate into them playing GH well.

After that, everyone was invited to come up and play the game for themselves. I wound up doubling up and playing Hit Me With Your Best Shot with another attendee. It was nice playing on wireless for once (since I’ve been playing on the 360 previously). Aside from a few interface changes the game plays the same as GH2, just with new songs. However the new game brings more than just new songs, as it has online multiplayer, many master tracks from the original artists, and other new features.

Overall, the launch event was very cool. The demo will also be playable at Digital Life at the Javits Center for the next few days as well if you’re in the area and want to check it out.