Activision set the stage for Guitar Hero's opening gig on the Xbox 360 this week, detailing a number of the version's exclusive features.

Naturally, the 360 version of Guitar Hero II will take advantage of the Xbox Live service and while there will be no direct game play online, players will access to themes, picture packs and new songs through the Marketplace. The service will also allow accomplished axe pickers to post their finest outings on online leaderboards and compare scores with others.

Not content on merely shoveling the same game over to the 360 hardware, a number of enhancements and features will be readily available right on the software. The game has received a visual facelift and now features remodeled high definition visuals.

The track listing for the game will be kicked up by 10 songs, with Billion Dollar Babies (Alice Cooper), Hush (Deep Purple), Dead! (My Chemical Romance), Life Wasted (Pearl Jam) and Rock N Roll Hoochie Koo (Rick Derringer) already announced as on-disc additions. Activision stated it would reveal more tracks, both on-disc and downloadable, in the near future.

Also, with the new hardware, comes a new controller, modeled after the Gibson X-Plorer guitar. Since the 360's wireless capabilities are proprietary, the guitar controller isn't wireless, but the riff buttons seem to now have a rectangular shape and additional buttons have been added for dashboard navigation.

Currently the game is scheduled for a spring release.