XBOX-HQ.COM - Harmonix: Activision is Rock-Blocking

Rock Band publisher MTV Games and developer Harmonix are accusing Guitar Hero III house Activision of blocking a patch that would make the PS3’s GHIII controller work with Rock Band.

“Two weeks ago, Harmonix created a software patch for the Sony PlayStation 3 version of Rock Band that allowed for guitar compatibility and support for third party peripherals, including enabling use of Activision's Guitar Hero III controller with Rock Band,” said an MTV rep in a statement sent to Next-Gen. “The compatibility patch was submitted, approved and had been scheduled for release by Sony on Tuesday, December 4. Unfortunately, Activision objected to the release of the compatibility patch. The patch remains with Sony, but we have been told that it will unfortunately not be released due to Activision's continued objection.”

Activision reps had not responded to requests for comment as of press time.

Harmonix plans on releasing individual Rock Band instrument peripherals sometime next year, but for the time being, the only way to get another PS3 Rock Band guitar controller is to buy the full $169 Rock Band bundle.

Currently, Xbox 360’s Guitar Hero III controller works with Rock Band.

"As we have said in the past, Harmonix and MTV Games believe in an open standard philosophy of hardware and game compatibility,” MTV Games’ statement added. “We think that there should be interoperability between music instrument controllers across all music games. This is clearly in the best interest of consumers, game developers and console manufacturers and will only help to grow the music game genre as well as inspire innovation and creativity.”

“As is the case with the Microsoft Xbox 360, we believe that Sony PlayStation 3 users should be able to use the peripheral of their choice with Rock Band. 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 subsidiary RedOctane said in a recent interview with consumer site 1UP, “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?"

News-Source: Next-Gen