Activision Blocking Rock Band Compatibility Patch

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Activision Blocking Rock Band Compatibility Patch


Activision [http://www.mtv.com/games/video_games/]is blocking the release of a patch that would make the Guitar Hero III controller for the PlayStation 3 compatible with Rock Band.

Sony [http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8321&Itemid=2]remains in possession of the patch, but has told MTV Games it will not be released.

"As is the case with the Microsoft Xbox 360 [http://www.xbox.com], we believe that Sony PlayStation 3 users should be able to use the peripheral of their choice with Rock Band," MTV Games said in its statement. "We sincerely hope that Activision will reverse its decision and allow release of the compatibility patch and further, that Activision will allow Guitar Hero III to support Rock Band guitar controllers as well. We welcome all third party developers who wish to support our controllers and will provide any required support in order for them to do so."

"We believe that when consumers have choice, everyone wins. Harmonix and MTV Games hope that Activision and others in the industry will also adopt this philosophy."

Activision has not yet commented on the MTV Games statement, but in an earlier interview with RedOctane [http://www.1up.com/]said, "I don't think we're too interested in having (Rock Band's) guitars work on our game, because they're having a lot of issues with their guitars. 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?"


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anable

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Aug 30, 2007
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I can't be the only one that thinks Activision is just desperately trying to retain their market share and MTV Games would be doing the same thing if the roles were reversed.
 

Sethala

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Dec 3, 2007
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Anyone else notice that the picture for this article is a Wii GH3 controller?

Just odd, since there's not even a Rock Band game for Wii...

Back on topic, though, I think the whole idea is stupid. Just let the peripherals be used for anything. I'm sure plenty of customers would buy both games if they knew they could use the same guitar on both, but would only buy one (or even none) if they had to get a seperate guitar for each game. Especially if they plan on playing it with two guitars.
 

Mystakill

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Oct 2, 2007
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I'm confused --- A representative from Activision subsidiary RedOctane said, "I don't think we're too interested in having (Rock Band's) guitars work on our game..."

Doesn't the patch make RedOctane's GHIII guitar working on Rock Band & not the other way around as stated by the oh-so-well-informed RedOctane representative? This would *increase* sales of GHIII as a supplement to Rock Band.

Sounds pretty spiteful to me, and not much about the money at all, since Activision's clearly spending money to prevent sales of their own GHIII.