Well, it looks like Blizzactivision kept its word on preventing RedOctane's Guitar Hero III controllers from working with another game--Rock Band. At least on the PlayStation 3.

It's a baffling decision from any perspective. Certainly some customers bought/would buy Guitar Hero III mostly to own an extra guitar for Rock Band. I did--luckily the Xbox 360 GH3 guitars didn't need a patch to work with Rock Band. I don't even play Guitar Hero III anymore because that game is a pile of shit compared to Rock Band, but that's not relevant to this argument.

Others would probably purchase the standalone GH3 Les Paul to use with Rock Band because they prefer it to the Rock Band controller. Either way, Activision's making money on Rock Band-related purchases.

So basically, Vivactizzard doesn't want people purchasing its game if they're going to use the plastic guitar to play another game which uses a plastic guitar that has nearly identical functionality. The company has now gone out of its way to prevent this from happening.

Do the company brass understand this makes them look like huge assholes, or do they just not care? Did they think we wouldn't find out?

This will probably only result in slightly fewer sales of Guitar Hero III on PS3 and slightly more sales of standalone Rock Band PS3 guitars when those finally come out. But for the people who either own both games on PS3 or want to, you're forced to pay a lot of money for superfluous plastic instrumentation.

Thank you, Harmonix, for trying to remedy the situation.

Fuck you, Activision, for making a traditionally nonsensical corporate decision.