[3] On 12 September 2008, FreeStyleGames was purchased by Activision for an undisclosed sum, following a period of commercial cooperation, mainly involving localised downloadable content for the Guitar Hero series.

The company had to lay off some employees during this time, but still were financially viable with success of Sing Party (2012) on the Wii U, which was a collaborative effort with Nintendo.

[6] As Sing Party's development was wrapping up, Activision approached FreeStyleGames to have them consider how to reboot the Guitar Hero franchise.

FreeStyleGames developed a new guitar controller atypical of ones that has been created to that point, and crafted a different approach towards presenting the game to players through a first-person perspective full-motion video.

[6] While Guitar Hero Live was praised by critics, it failed to have significant sales, falling short of Activision's projections.