Sony working to make music peripherals compatible across all music based games

[Queasy]

Link - Definitely the obvious and smart move. Nobody is going to pay $150 for one game and set of instruments and then $180 for another game and set of instruments....at least, nobody with more sense than money.

Hi everybody, Michael Shorrock, here. I?m the Director of Publisher Relations here at SCEA. I work closely with all of the publishers and developers who create games for all PlayStation platforms. While SCEA had a ton of great announcements at E3, I?m excited to say, we have one more for today, one that I know a lot of you have been asking about:

For the past several months, we have been working closely with Neversoft and Activision, Harmonix and Konami to ensure that PlayStation 3 guitars and drum sets will all feature a basic level of gameplay compatibility.

For the most part, this means that the titles with musical peripherals will work with the other?s software. A few specific examples include: Guitar Hero: World Tour?s guitars and drums will work with Rock Band 2 and Konami?s Rock Revolution software.

And yes, you guessed it, Rock Band 2?s guitar and drum set will work with Guitar Hero: World Tour and with Rock Revolution.

Conversely, Rock Revolution?s drum set will work with both Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2.

In addition, Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2 will both support the SingStar microphones.

We?re still working hard to ensure compatibility between the Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles currently on the market, and we hope to have an announcement on that shortly.

Of course each of these great games have their own specific cool features that may not be compatible with the other controllers, but this is our first big step in bringing a level of compatibility to music games that is sure to benefit PlayStation 3 consumers.

Keep an eye out here for more information in the future.

 

[aphex]

Just saw the article as well. VERY COOL! THANKS SONY!

 

[JackBurton]

Beautiful!

 

[DaveSimmons]

Since Activision has been a jerk and blocked PS3 cross-compatibility until now, it's good that Sony is stepping in and telling them to stop it.

Sadly, it probably involves a payoff since they failed to extort money from EA.

 

[lupi]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Since Activision has been a jerk and blocked PS3 cross-compatibility until now, it's good that Sony is stepping in and telling them to stop it.

Sadly, it probably involves a payoff since they failed to extort money from EA.

If they were smart they'd add it as part of the liscense agreement. None of the publishers would want to lose such a large segment of the market to these cash cows so sony would have some leverage in the take it or leave it realm.

 

[erwos]

That's nice. Hopefully Microsoft will pursue a similar policy.

 

[Queasy]

Heh, just ran across an instrument compatibility matrix from Joystiq for all consoles.

 

[Runes911]

Originally posted by: erwos
That's nice. Hopefully Microsoft will pursue a similar policy.

I think they already do. GH guitars work on Rock Band and vise versa.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: Runes911

Originally posted by: erwos
That's nice. Hopefully Microsoft will pursue a similar policy.

I think they already do. GH guitars work on Rock Band and vise versa.

yep

I was forwarded a link to an article on the Playstation Blog this morning that stated Sony has announced that all of the instruments in three upcoming music games (Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour, and Rock Revolution) will be compatible with each other.

At the bottom a Gamasutra article about the blog post it stated:

Similar music game peripheral enforcement has yet to be enacted (or at least officially announced) on the Xbox 360 platform.

For the record, we also do that, so consider this an official announcement.

All the instruments from Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour, and Rock Revolution will be cross-compatible.

In other words, welcome to the party. 😉

 

[JE78]

Thats good news, I was planning on picking up GH4 but my wife likes the tracks on RB2, glad we won't have to buy both sets now.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Excellent, now they need to force all peripherals (where applicable) to be bluetooth and require no USB dongles!