With the raging success that is Guitar Hero, there’s little doubt that the music rhythm genre on the console space would be the next most-cloned game type until the Next Big Thing. Granted, Guitar Hero itself is basically a clone of Konami’s Guitar Freaks arcade game, and now it seems everything is going full circle – and we can’t call Rock Band a clone of Guitar Hero, as Harmonix was behind the birth of both franchises.

The real impetus for this blog, however, is the reveal of the different drum set hardware for each game series. The latest Game Informer magazine shows the first image of the drum kit for the upcoming Guitar Hero 4 game, which will obviously feature drumming to keep up with that other music game.

Now, I don’t expect that every music game will follow peripheral standards of having five colored buttons and a strum/beat method (though I’m sure Xbox 360 owners loved the ability to use Guitar Hero guitars with Rock Band, a feature PS3 owners couldn’t enjoy). After all, having different hardware will hopefully spawn more creativity... but really, I won’t be able to put up with having three different drum kits just to be able to fulfill some rock star dream.

That’s right, three drum kits! In addition to the current kit for Rock Band, and the upcoming one for Guitar Hero 4, Konami is going to try reclaim some of the bemani share it has lost with Rock Revolution. The main focus of Rock Revolution will be drums, though it won’t be strictly a DrumMania entry as it will also allow for guitar and bass.

So this is how things will soon look for video game drummers: Rock Band drums with its four colored pads and a pedal; Guitar Hero 4 with its three colored pads, two raised cymbals and a pedal; and Rock Revolution with six pads and a pedal. In other words, a very, very cramped and cluttered gaming area.

At least one thing will be common between the drum kits for Rock Revolution and Guitar Hero: they both aim to be much quieter than Rock Band’s kit.