Pre-E3: DJ Hero 2's artists have serious YouTube cred

8:00 AM on 06.10.2010   |   Nick Chester

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Earlier this week, Activision dropped the first details on DJ Hero 2, the sequel to what its claims is the "#1 selling new IP of 2009." The title brings with it a slew of new features, including support for vocals, and drop-in and drop-out gameplay.

But what has Jamie Jackson, Creative Director at Freestyle games (the developer behind DJ Hero) so enthusiastic is the breadth of new music in the new title.

"Something that's exciting to me about DJ Hero 2 is that the artists and the labels are excited as we are about making the gamer better, and including a wider range of popular music," he says.

During a pre-E3 demo of the upcoming sequel, Jackson explains that in order to gauge artist popularity, Freestyle Games' music director Dan Neil turned to YouTube. Looking at the artist list from DJ Hero 1, the artists collectively drove over 350 million YouTube hits. Impressive? Maybe, but what about DJ Hero 2?

"That figure grew to over 1.2 billion hits," Jackson says. The title will feature over 70 mixes from 100 individual songs from artists like Lady Gaga, Dr. Dre, The Chemical Brothers, Kanye West, The Pussycat Dolls, and Deadmau5 (who will appear as a character in the game).

DJ Hero 2 is out this Fall for PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360.