Rock Band In The House

There are a lot of things I could say about Rock Band right now, but I only want to focus on one. The game is available either as a standalone disc for 60 bucks, or bundled with a guitar, drum kit, and mic for $170. Since the primary focus of Rock Band is to have an entire band, that means you need a second guitar for the bassist. The only way to get said guitar would be to either buy another $170 bundle (which is ridiculous), or use one of the guitars from GH3, assuming it's compatible.

Here's an excerpt from a Q&A session with a Rock Band PR rep a little more than a month ago.

Q: What about the bass? Do we need to buy it separately?
A: The Fender Stratocaster Rock Band guitar will function as both the lead guitar as well as bass. In terms of getting another guitar to play either guitar or bass, consumers can either use another Rock Band guitar or use another guitar controller as Harmonix has an open platform philosophy and their games will be compatible with third-party controllers that conform to the various platform controller standards.

As clarification, here's another one.

Q: For the Ps3 version, the guitar from Guitar Hero III won't be compatible with Rock Band. True?
A: Harmonix has an open platform philosophy and their games will be compatible with third-party controllers that conform to the various platform controller standards.

According to the interwebs, the 360 GH3 guitar and Rock Band work together just fine, no problems. I tried to get my PS3 GH3 controller to play with Rock Band, and guess what happened?

If you said, "It didn't fucking work," you'd be absolutely right.

I'd really like to play the part of the cautiously optimistic person and say that Harmonix is hard at work on a patch right now that will allow the PS3 GH3 controller to be used with Rock Band, but I don't think that's the case. Why should Harmonix bother to make a competitor's product work with theirs? Because that's what they said? Fuck, people say a lot of things. Because that's the only way to play with a full band until at least February of 2008? Fuck, go buy another bundle, it's only 170 bucks. Because a consumer can't return a game once it's been opened? Fuck, quit whining, that helps protect you from the effects of piracy.

I propose they retitle the game: Rock Band*

The asterisk says: "Except for the bassist. Who needs a bassist anyway? They're just guys who aren't good enough to play lead guitar."