Rockband or GHIII - Want both, you're getting screwed

Shino · Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 11:57 am Post subject:

cool... drop me a link to the topic. Smile

Aiman · Demon Knight Age: 43 Gender: Joined: 14 Jan 2003

LINK!

It takes a while to load, so... Have patience, my young padawan.

Razer · 4934 5157 5662 5658 Gender: Joined: 07 Oct 2002

so...can you only use a new (Activision) GH3 guitar to play GH3 on the PS2 with full compatibility? Basically will a guitar made during the GH2 era work on GH3?
And am I correct in saying that there is no guitar that will play on both games (GH3 & RB) with full compatibility?

My daughter wants GH3 and I don't want to buy a second guitar (at all really but...) and find it work work.

RuneLateralus · Otaku Knight Gender: Joined: 27 Sep 2002

I tried the demo at Best Buy and I really enjoyed what I tried. This game will be awesome. Can't wait for it.

Razer · 4934 5157 5662 5658 Gender: Joined: 07 Oct 2002

Latest news on this (from 1UP.com):

"Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock has five buttons and a strum bar. Rock Band has five buttons and a strum bar. The interface is the same. Despite these similarities, however, there's no assurance your guitar will actually work in both games. Rock Band's virtual axe doesn't function in Guitar Hero III, but Guitar Hero III's guitar does work in Rock Band -- on Xbox 360, anyway. On the PlayStation 3, Guitar Hero III's guitar doesn't work in Rock Band.

Confused? You should be.

We're tired of being confused, too. To try and clear the air, we rang Red Octane's co-founder and VP of Business Development, Charles Huang, to speak at length about the confusing consumer issue -- and why it hasn't been resolved yet. Red Octane has developed the controllers for Guitar Hero since day one. "I totally understand where the consumer is coming from. Quite honestly, you're not buying a $40, $50 or $60 game. You're buying a $100 Guitar Hero bundle, a $170 Rock Band bundle and suddenly you're finding out you just spent $270 and things aren't going right," said Huang to 1UP.

Through our conversation with Huang, we discovered the technical reasons for the mixed state of cross-compatibility. Guitar Hero III's controller works in Rock Band on Xbox 360 because Harmonix worked with Red Octane on the previous Guitar Hero iterations; they know how Red Octane's hardware works. Rock Band's controller doesn't work in Guitar Hero III, however, because Red Octane didn't have access to the Rock Band controller prior to the game's release. Thus, no way to test it.

On PS3, neither side could run their peripherals over Bluetooth, forcing them to develop USB dongles on their own. "Red Octane was in development on Guitar Hero and Harmonix was in development on Rock Band, and we would take our guitars and our software into Sony and show them what we're going to build. They would test them and say 'fine, that works.' Harmonix would do the same with Rock Band controllers and Rock Band and Sony would test them and say 'fine, that works,'" explained Huang. "Sony's supposed to be a neutral third-party and they're not supposed to tell us what Harmonix is doing and they're not supposed to tell Harmonix what we're doing, so they can't release any information to either side that say 'well, Red Octane, you're guitars aren't working with their software.'"

Fair enough. But, now both games are on the market and, currently, there's no way for anyone to use their Rock Band controller in the Guitar Hero series. Apparently, however, Rock Band's guitar issues are a roadblock. "I don't think we're too interested in having their guitars work on our game, because they're having a lot of issues with their guitars," said Huang. "From our standpoint, to be quite honest, if you know a competitor's product has issues, there's not a whole lot of motivation to make these problematic controllers work with your game. Why would you want to cause yourself the headache?"

Based on initial reports, Harmonix has remedied the strum issue with Rock Band guitar, so Huang's suggestion that cross-compatibility would hurt their product might not hold water much longer. Huang admits the issue is out of their hands, anyway. "Long term, you can't go against what the consumer wants," he said. "Before people at Harmonix or Neversoft start throwing a lot of resources into cross compatibility, we're probably just focused on this Christmas, getting the other issues resolved. Quite honestly, that is our number one complaint in customer service: when can I buy a standalone guitar?"

With word trickling down that Harmonix will soon be issuing a patch to the PS3 version of Rock Band to ensure greater cross-compatibility, Red Octane, Neversoft and Activision may be left with no choice but to start implementing support for Rock Band's peripherals in the near future.

Still, the situation leaves a bitter taste in Huang's month; before launch, Harmonix said their guitars adhered to an "open standard" on each platform. If a guitar didn't work in their game, it was the manufacturer's fault, claimed Harmonix. "There is no such thing as an open standard on PS3 for guitar controllers. That's just a crock. Open standard is something like USB or 802.11 [a wireless protocol]. They publish the spec and if you want to build a USB anything, you follow these specs. I defy anybody to show me, before our games were released, to show a published spec of how to build a guitar controller on PS3," said Huang."

We simply bought the PS2 GH3 dual guitar package from Target. There will be no Rock Band in our future.