It seems that sometimes being a financial analyst can lead you to hot video game stories no one else knows about. Such is the case for Edward Woo, an employee of Wedbush Morgan, who was looking through Activision’s most recent SEC filing and discovered that the company is launching Guitar Hero: Metallica in Fiscal 2009. Given Activision’s fiscal calendar, that means the game could drop anytime between now and March 31 of next year.

The big mystery right now is if the game will be guitar only, or feature all the peripherals that Activision is planning to add in the upcoming Guitar Hero World Tour. The song list is also unknown (God help us if they put anything from St. Anger on there), as is whether it will be a solely Metallica-laden disc or if it will feature other bands much like Guitar Hero: Aerosmith.

What this does seem to mean is that Guitar Hero, rather than focusing on DLC like rival Rock Band, is more apt to release entire retail games based on a certain band’s musical catalog. It remains to be seen if this strategy will manage to pay big dividends for the most successful music game franchise, but if it does, plan on seeing Guitar Hero:[Insert Band Name Here] cropping up every three months from now until the time when it is no longer cool to wail away on plastic instruments.