My wife and I were discussing last night what we thought Activision might call the increasingly inaccurately named ‘Guitar Hero IV’, given that it’s really not just about guitars anymore; ‘Rock Hero’ maybe? Rock Clone? Clone Band? Or perhaps they’ll just keep the GH4 name just in the interests of branding, and give it a lame subtitle to explain the inconsistency, probably slipping the word ‘Rock’ in there discretely somewhere. You probably saw the announcement recently of the drum kit, which has all the hallmarks of being required to ‘take it to the next level’ by replacing one drumpad with two dedicated cymbal pads. I can see a besuited marketing man ‘putting up the horns’ right now and high-fiving people rather awkwardly in front of a powerpoint presentation. Who knows if it will work, but what it definitely means is lack of compatibility between the peripherals for Rock Band and GH4. Which immediately excludes it from my house.
If they were thinking of renaming GH4, one option has now gone since Konami have announced ‘Rock Revolution‘, which again sounds like it’s going to have its own peripherals, although details are sketchy. Incompatibility with GH4 / RB would seem like suicide in this case, even if it was on a par with Rock Band, which it really doesn’t appear to be, but hey, what do I know. The bandwagon for guitar/drum/vocal music games is certainly getting kinda crowded now…
Personally, I got burned by GH3 (which proved itself a game for hardcore soloists, and utterly failed to deliver decent party play) and will hitherto trust Harmonix to know how these things are done. Anything that’s not compatible with my incoming RB peripherals (one week until release!) is wasting its time.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
One thing I hope is artists don’t start doing exlusive deals one way or the other. It would suck if that’s how they try to differentiate themselves from each other.
I think ignoring the compatibility and adding cymbals is a bad idea too. Making it compatible means more people just buying the game from you who wouldn’t normally give it a shot (due to the added price for instruments). I’d personally rather sell the software and let the other guy worry about supporting the hardware if it breaks :).
May 16th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I take it you’ve seen that photo’s of the Rock Revolution’s drums have also found there way onto the internet and like Guitar Hero IV’s are also not compatible with anything else…
Madness… absolute madness…
May 21st, 2008 at 3:48 pm
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