| Mail |

You might also like: WoW Insider, Massively, and more

More Sites You Might Like

/ Register

Joystiq

E3's Rock Band guitars wired, fuels 360 price speculation

by Richard Mitchell on Jul 12th 2007 7:15PM

After an intense session of Rock Band from Harmonix -- we totally nailed the vocal for Stone Temple Pilots' "Vasoline" by the way -- we noticed that the guitars had dangling wires tethering them to the Xbox 360. Considering the game has been widely advertised as having wireless guitars, this made us curious. Remembering the recently leaked price memo, you may recall that the wireless 360 guitar was listed at $79.99 while the PS3 guitar was listed at $59.99. Some have speculated that the 360 discrepancy is the result of having to pay Microsoft to use its proprietary wireless technology. Is MTV Games making cheaper wired guitars for those that can't afford wireless? Mmm ... could be.

Tags: E3, e307, ea, Electronic-Arts, electronicarts, harmonix, mtvgames, PS3, rockband, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (27)

Bluetooth FTW!!!

Hopefully the eventual (possible, god damnit, I hope they make a) Wii version will be even cheaper since all the wireless tech is in the Wiimote...

Proprietary wireless formats FTL.

But why would the 360 guitars cost more than the PS3 ones, but the drums and mic would cost the same as the PS3?

But, yeah, damn Microsoft and their proprietary wireless crap.

Microsoft killed my father, and raped my mother!

and I witnessed it :)

Who the hell is playing it that far from the TV, that Wireless is a necessity?

It's annoying as hell with a wire duh, you don't have to be far...

Sometimes you rock out too hard, moving around and such, jokingly showing off, and the controller becomes unplug. It's happened to me before on the PS2 Guitar Hero.

what realy concerns me is the position of the Start button.. I don't want to be pulling some Peter Moore in the middle a guitar solo :)

No I don't think its any of that, I do believe though that the extra $20 is for the Microsoft wireless technology thing... but as far as why its wired is just because thats what a lot of Tech Demos have, like when they showed 360 demos or stuff like that, they always have it wired in in case the batteries died or w/e

Microsoft needs to recoup money wherever they can. 1 Billion+ is not small change for anyone.

Except Micro$$$$$oft

I think it has to do with batteries and the fact they want as little interference as possible during the demo. All the regular games seemed to be using wired controllers as well.

That, or they haven't finnished making the wireless version yet. *shrug*

Or it could be just they used a wired one for the show cause there are so many wireless devices around.

Or because they don't want anyone running off with the guitar.

Pulling a Peter Moore... by god he is never going to live that down....

I'm really glad they made this so similar to guitar hero, down to the star power and all. I was afraid they'd make a bunch of unnecessary changes just to differentiate themselves from GH.

i know i'm probably the only one ... but i could care less about rockband. imho i think the whole thing is gimmicky. i don't want to buy a game, a guitar, a drum, and a mic + pay more for rereleased peripherals "updated" to technology standards (wireless)that have been around for years. just release some more guitar hero discs or games that will work with my current guitar ... my wired 360 guitar works just fine. does anyone else feel the same way?

yeah, you know you only have to buy the game, since the GH guitar works with Rockband too....

GameStop's preorder lists show a wired and wireless version, and they probably had the wired ones at E3 so nobody would run away with them.

It's nice that they're giving us options. I guess for some people, the guitar being wired won't matter to them so they have the option to save some $$$ and go with the wired guitar.

But yeah, like the comments above, propriety format FTL :(

ROCKBAND Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2346954822

I can't honestly believe that the licensing fee would be so great to necessitate such a huge discrepancy of 20 more dollars per guitar.

Something else has to be at play.

Yeah, seriously. And you have to imagine that MS knows they'd be pricing the game out of the realm of reason if they did so.

I mean, there's a strong chance the guitars just aren't as far along for the system as one would hope at this point. Since MS's stuff is proprietary, maybe they still haven't gotten it worked into the game, but still wanted to demo it.

I mean, I obviously have no clue, but there's a LOT of conclusions you can draw from it... anything else is just hearsay at this point.

I dont see why they dont just make them with their own wireless and use a dongle in the usb slots on the 360 just to give the finger to Microsoft for being such asshats in the first place.

I actually want a wired one. I'll finally be able to play Frets on Fire without a keyboard.

You can already play Frets on Fire with the X360 wired Xplorer Guitar hero controller. It has a usb connection and everything, and they are about 50-60 dollars CDN. Drivers are provided by Microsoft by letting XP search for the drivers on the internet. It is actually the first peripheral that works for this method that I have seen hahaha.

Sorry, you must be logged in to leave a comment.

Breaking News

E3's Rock Band guitars wired, fuels 360 price speculation

Reader Comments (27)

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 7:18PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 7:20PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 7:23PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 7:32PM Seroth said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 8:46PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 13th 2007 3:42PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 7:42PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 7:49PM imadogg said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 7:56PM Seroth said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 7:50PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 7:52PM soccerdude21490 said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 7:56PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 8:01PM imadogg said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 8:03PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 8:02PM Exo said

Posted: Jul 13th 2007 8:36AM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 8:03PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 8:11PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 8:25PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 15th 2007 2:19AM mixiboi said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 8:37PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 8:40PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 12th 2007 9:47PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 13th 2007 12:32AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 13th 2007 2:19AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 13th 2007 3:48AM shoeshine said

Posted: Jul 13th 2007 10:23PM (Unverified) said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

Double Fine Kickstarter passes $1 million in under 24 hours, breaking yet another record

Featured Stories

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier brings information warfare to the front

Rhythm Heaven Fever review: Crazy into you

Remedy not done with Alan Wake

The most popular postsin the last 7 days

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days