Guitar Hero Drums Now Work in Rock Band 2 PS3

2
Following the October 26 launch of Neversoft's Guitar Hero World Tour and its specialized drum controller, competitor Harmonix today released a patch for the PS3 version of Rock Band 2 that enables compatibility with Guitar Hero drums and guitars.

Upon booting Rock Band 2, PlayStation Network-connected players will be automatically prompted to download and apply the update, bringing the game up to version 1.01. The download also resolves a variety of bugs and glitches.

The cross-game instrument compatibility fulfills Sony's earlier promise, with Microsoft having made a similar vow for the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 instruments for Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour were cross-compatible upon release.

Read on for the patch notes, as posted by Harmonix on its official message board:

Harmonix and MTV Games have always believed in an open platform for music game peripherals and were the first to advocate interoperability. The reason for that is simple: our fans. Consumers should not be forced to buy separate controllers for each game. Rock Band peripherals should be compatible with other music games--even those of our competitors. We've continued to lead the charge for a game controller open platform, even offering to work with any developer or publisher towards making that happen.

We have been actively working with Sony to develop a software solution to correct the interoperability PS3 issue with the Guitar Hero World Tour drum and guitar peripherals and are pleased to announce that this solution is going live via patch today. We are extremely excited that consumers can finally use the peripherals of their choice with their games on the PS3, and that they no longer need to buy multiple guitars or drums. Harmonix and MTV Games will continue making every effort to support interoperability, and to maintain it for all of our games and hardware in the future.

Release Notes:

    Hardware
    • Provided support for third party drum and guitar controllers including GHWT & RR.
    • Adjusted crosstalk values for drum hardware.
    • Bug fix for remote drum fills being silent - users will now hear the drum track when drum fills.
    Gameplay
    • Fixed overlapping drum fill bug on drum track.
    • Fixed rare network crash involving client signing out during setlist creation.
    • Fixed rare crash on calibration screen when users mash guitar controller buttons.
    • Fixed bug where Leaderboard scores in BWT were not uploading after users played the first song.
    • Fixed bug where Leaderboard career scores were posted including DLC songs and not just disc songs as originally intended.

    Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

    Filed Under
From The Chatty
  • reply
    November 24, 2008 3:09 PM

    I hope that next gen consoles they will all agree to a common set of instruments. Developers then can market by looks and additional features so long as they are cross game compatible 100%.

    • reply
      November 24, 2008 3:19 PM

      Nobody predicted that they'd have multiple 'instrument' games, or they would have been compatible from the outset.

      Next Gen will have compatible intruments, but they'll come out with punching bag games and you'll have to buy 3 different bags.

Hello, Meet Lola