Entertainment, Gaming, Playstation 3, Sony
My Take on the Harmonix/Activision Deal
If you aren’t familiar with the situation, here is a brief summary. Rock Band launches to massive fanfare and clamor for additional guitars to make a full band. Standalone guitars won’t be available until sometime next year. Standalone Guitar Hero guitars ARE available so why not use them? This is a non-issue for Xbox 360 owners as Microsoft required a standard controller configuration from both developers. Sony, however, did not. Where that leaves us is that the Guitar Hero controller does not work on the PS3. Not without a patch that is.
This is where things get tricky. Rumors trickled out that Harmonix had prepped and tested a patch for the PS3 version of Rock Band that would allow gamers to use the GH controllers. Activision, however, kindly told Sony not to allow Harmonix to release the patch effectively ensuring that their controllers couldn’t be used on a competitors game.
You can’t really blame Activision for this move. I mean, initially it sounded like a dick move, but the more I think about it the more I side with Activision. If you let anyone use your controllers, then others can skip the need to develop a controller and profit greatly on the heels of your work.
Back to the story at hand, Activision looks like the bad guy preventing gamers from using something they already own to play another game. In reality, Activision went on record saying that they gave Harmonix the opportunity to work with them for the right to also use the GH controllers. What this means in PR talk is “We told Harmonix they could use our technology with Rock Band for $XX.xx and they said no dice.”
Again, I have to side with Activision. It’s not Activision’s fault that:
1. There are no stand alone Rock Band controllers
2. The Rock Band hardware is having serious issues aka The guitars just don’t work
I haven’t really been keeping up with that the gamers think of the whole situation, but I personally don’t see anything wrong with what Activision is doing. The only bit of advice I have for anyone considering jumping into this fiasco is to buy the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band and forget this ever happened.
20 Dec 2007 09:11 pm Chris 0 comments