Shockz0rz
12-13-2007, 11:51 AM
Unlike many other peripheral-based games out there (I'M LOOKING AT YOU, DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION), Harmonix's previous guitar games and their accompanying controllers seemed to pretty much have a near-flawless track record with reliability. And then along comes Rock Band, which, despite the awesomeness of the game itself, is a peripheral cluster$#@& with a failure rate that looks to be on par with the 360's Red Rings of Death, if not higher (and customer service/RMA nightmares to match). So how did this happen? Here's my guess.
To the best of my knowledge, the guitar controllers that came with Guitar Hero 1 and 2 were manufactured by RedOctane themselves. RedOctane, of course, was known for their high-quality music game hardware before they ever went into the game publishing business. (I still swear by my Ignition dance pads for DDR.) Of course, once Harmonix split with the newly-assimilated-by-Activision RedOctane, that wasn't an option. So now who's in charge of making the guitars and/or finding someone to make 'em? Electronic %($&in' Arts. Yup, the folks who churn out year after year of identical Madden games, have a digital download service that charges you 5 bucks extra if you want to keep accessing the game you already paid for, and who abandoned Battlefield 2 while it was still in a state that would barely qualify as "beta".
You know, looking at it that way, I'm frankly surprised things aren't going even worse.
At least you guys owned up to the high failure rate pretty quickly (though I suspect that, had it been an internal EA developer instead of Harmonix in charge of the game, it'd be a year before they admitted anything). And, in the end, I still love this game. So thank you, Harmonix, for making the single most incredible music game ever. And &)%$ you, EA, for screwing it up with your cheap P.O.S. hardware.
To the best of my knowledge, the guitar controllers that came with Guitar Hero 1 and 2 were manufactured by RedOctane themselves. RedOctane, of course, was known for their high-quality music game hardware before they ever went into the game publishing business. (I still swear by my Ignition dance pads for DDR.) Of course, once Harmonix split with the newly-assimilated-by-Activision RedOctane, that wasn't an option. So now who's in charge of making the guitars and/or finding someone to make 'em? Electronic %($&in' Arts. Yup, the folks who churn out year after year of identical Madden games, have a digital download service that charges you 5 bucks extra if you want to keep accessing the game you already paid for, and who abandoned Battlefield 2 while it was still in a state that would barely qualify as "beta".
You know, looking at it that way, I'm frankly surprised things aren't going even worse.
At least you guys owned up to the high failure rate pretty quickly (though I suspect that, had it been an internal EA developer instead of Harmonix in charge of the game, it'd be a year before they admitted anything). And, in the end, I still love this game. So thank you, Harmonix, for making the single most incredible music game ever. And &)%$ you, EA, for screwing it up with your cheap P.O.S. hardware.
