Filed under: Gaming

It’s sad that the petty bickering between Activision, Harmonix, and Konami required console makers to step up and ensure that gamers didn’t end up with piles of redundant plastic instrument controllers, but things are starting to get better — just as Sony did yesterday, Microsoft announced that it’s requiring Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Revolution to be cross-compatible on the Xbox 360. The post on Redmond’s Gamerscore blog isn’t chock-full of details, but we’ll commend Microsoft and Sony for getting involved to make sure that all the lawsuits and infighting don’t adversely affect their customers — now if they could only find a way to make those drumkits actually fit into a living room, we’d be all set.

[Via Joystiq]

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Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

With all the incompatibility out there among Guitar Hero / Rock Band instruments, it’s a real treat to see something like this. The Director of Publisher Relations at SCEA has posted an update that promises compatibility between instruments and software for upcoming titles; for instance, Guitar Hero: World Tour’s guitars and drums will work with Rock Band 2 and Konami’s Rock Revolution software, and Rock Band 2’s guitar and drum set will work with Guitar Hero: World Tour and with Rock Revolution. Furthermore, the team is still “working hard to ensure compatibility between the Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles currently on the market,” though we are told that an announcement on that could surface “shortly.” Rock ‘n roll harmony, baby.

[Image courtesy of BeSportier]

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Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Brilliant, just brilliant. As if Rock Band wasn’t living room clutter enough, Activision is busting out a drumset for Guitar Hero IV, and now Konami is getting in on the “pretending to play music” meme with its very own Rock Revolution title. If the oversaturation of incompatible music peripherals wasn’t enough to make you take pause, the janky-ass nature of Konami’s kit certainly might. Granted, there are more things to hit on Konami’s set, Rock Revolution allows you to improvise in between the proscribed hits, and doesn’t require that pesky kick drum until midway through its five difficulty levels, but MTV Multiplayer’s Patrick Klepek didn’t have too easy of a time hitting on it, while his buddy did a lot of plastic smashing attempting to improvise — not a promising start. Oh, what was that? We can play “Sk8er boi”? We take it all back, when can we buy?

[Via Joystiq]

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