Harmonix Spokeswoman Statement

[John Redcorn]

Is this true? In an article from yesterdays Boston Globe Harmonix Spokeswoman Spencer Saltonstall said that harmonix launched Rock Band BEFOREit had enough guitar controllers to go around, to get the game into stores before christmas. Also, do you really have 7000 chinese making guitars for us right now?

Just wanted to know from someone in authority on this board since they read all the mesages, if that is truly the case.

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/12/20/standoff_hits_a_sour_chord_with_gamers/

[zerogeo3]

Well lets see, they have had to replace I would guess 98% of the original guitars. Not to mention, all the bundles. Single instrments are not avaliable until Feb 2008. So in a word some is right, ie. Activision Blows. Others while right have already been announced, ie. Single instrument release, and guitar replacements.

Welcome to the Rock Band Forums....:eek:

[davidshek]

Well lets see, they have had to replace I would guess 98% of the original guitars. Not to mention, all the bundles.

98%? Way to totally pull a number out of your ass there. Let's see, the article said they sold 382,000 units of RB in November. 98% of that would be 374,360 replacement guitars...

I don't think so :p Even with 7000 people in China building these guitars, let's pretend they can build 3 a day each...that would still take them *17* days to build 374,360 replacement guitars. Even at 5 guitars a day, it would be almost 11 days for that many. Not to mention the non-replacements they need to build to get the individual instruments in stores and into new bundles.

Now, if you'd like to say they've had to replace 98% of the guitars for people that are on this forum, sure, I might agree with ya there. But that's because the people who got working guitars aren't on here complaining :)

[Chris_Gonzalez]

They've stated that because there's not enough instruments to be individually packaged before Christmas, that the individual game bundles will be released in 2008. That part is old news.

What I find funny, though, is the Activision statement which is full of complete and utter douchebaggery. Activision wants to "maintain the high standards people have come to expect from" them, yet they also think that they "should be compensated for use of their technology"? I, personally, never thought of Activision as an ENTIRELY money grubbing company, but my outlook on them has changed. If greed is their high standard, WTF are we doing supporting them?

[batsu336]

Of course Harmonix launched before it had enough controllers...otherwise they would have started selling guitars alone from the start...isn't this common knowledge? GH3 did the same thing, which is why they don't have stand alone guitars out yet either. The same thing happened with the relase of the PS2, PS3, XBox, XBox360 and Wii. You don't make a huge excess of hardware in advance. Supply and demand, baby. What's the big deal?

Also, I agree with Shek's assessment as far as percentage of replacement guitars. They people with working guitars aren't on the forum complaining. The number of defects looks huge on the forum, because that is where the people with broken equipment come to complain. The percentage of defects will be skewed to the high end by taking a poll on this site. No official numbers have come out, so anyone giving a percentage is simply guessing with absolutely no data to go by.

[whittibo]

I don't think so :p Even with 7000 people in China building these guitars, let's pretend they can build 3 a day each...that would still take them *17* days to build 374,360 replacement guitars. Even at 5 guitars a day, it would be almost 11 days for that many. Not to mention the non-replacements they need to build to get the individual instruments in stores and into new bundles.

Totally irrelevant here, but why would you think they could only build 3 or 5 each a day? My husband works for a company who makes motors for John Deere tractors and they just developed a new motor and signed a contract to get out 400 a day starting in January. He has only been there about 2 months and they signed the contract after he started, and to date they are already getting out 200 motors a day, and there are only 8-10 people on the line building the motors.

Their biggest problem right now is, not building the motors, but they keep running out of odd and end pieces for the motors which stops the line. But I would assume 7000 people could get out FAR more then 3-5 each per day. :s

I think the number break down with the JD motors is something like one motor comes off the line every 4 minutes. And it's a VERY small department in this HUGE company.

[EliteXFactor]

Is this true? In an article from yesterdays Boston Globe Harmonix Spokeswoman Spencer Saltonstall said that harmonix launched Rock Band BEFOREit had enough guitar controllers to go around, to get the game into stores before christmas. Also, do you really have 7000 chinese making guitars for us right now?

Just wanted to know from someone in authority on this board since they read all the mesages, if that is truly the case.

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/12/20/standoff_hits_a_sour_chord_with_gamers/

Is it possible that if we lick our geetar, we will blackout because of the date-rape coating on the geetar and tiny chinese men will come out of the geetar and...DO...us?