Andrew

The ignorance of some people here is astounding. Layoffs are not "classless" acts by a company. They are a necessary evil in the corporate world, particularly so in an economic recession. Read the other article about this and you'll see that there was an influx of QA positions to meet the 2009 release date for TB:RB and that those were the lion's share of the positions that were eliminated today.

Furthermore, nearly EVERY gaming company in the entire industry hire temps or part-timers to do QA work. You have a VERY small full-time QA staff that are constant, while the vast majority are in flux.

@saspa: You really think NOT buying their products is going to get those people hired back? I certainly hope not. These layoffs have NOTHING to do with sales (or supposed lack thereof) but rather conforming to the standards of the industry. And what does it being just before Christmas have to do with anything? This restructuring has nothing to do with sales, so I fail to see your point.

Yep. It was lightly used with a couple of stickers on the guitar. The slider still works just fine though, which was the only way I passed Satch Boogie, lol.

Autocalibrate is probably the single most handy innovation from Harmonix, I think. It's so nice when setting up at a party or whatever.

Yeah, I picked up the GH:WT game+guitar bundle for 30 bucks. I can't say that I don't regret it at all, but it wasn't a stupid purchase. There are a few songs that are fun on there, but since I primarily play drums, I don't enjoy the game as much. Their charts don't translate to a real e-kit very well at all. Guitar is obviously the focus and is definitely fun, but the game lacks the personality that I feel Rock Band has. Definitely not the worst games out there (Rock Revolution?) but GH is far inferior to RB, in my opinion.

Of course you know what they say about opinions... lol

Duly noted. GH's DLC does suck without a doubt, and likely will continue to. Until the disc-based model starts to lose money, I don't see them swapping over. GH and RB serve two different communities at the moment. GH appealing to achievement whores and the fans who like "new" games to come out. RB appealing to music fans who prefer to buy one game with accurate charts and customize their library to their own musical tastes. I'm obviously in the latter group :-)

And that point is duly noted. GH DLC has always sucked, and will likely continue to suck forever. Until GH's disc-based model really starts to lose them money, I don't see them changing. RB and GH appeal to two entirely different crowds right now. I personally prefer RB due to higher quality charts and only having to put in two discs (Beatles or RB2) to play the ~700 songs I own.

First off, this is highly unlikely to affect DLC output. Harmonix has developed fantastic tools to make creating charts for DLC easier than ever, so even a smaller team could produce as many songs as they were producing when RB1 came out. Plus, most of the positions were in QA, not charting. Add in the fact that RBN comes out early next year, and I don't see DLC slowing down any time soon.

Secondly, MTV is an affiliate company with Harmonix. MTV has NOTHING to do with Guitar Hero, but rather have been involved with almost every Rock Band game. So MTV wouldn't be promising anything about GH DLC except that Rock Band will always have more.

I don't think this is bad for Harmonix as a company, just the individuals involved. It's sad that they worked so hard to get Harmonix to where they are now, and are now getting a pink slip, but it seems like a necessary step to put Harmonix in a place to handle an even greater workload. I'm sad for the individuals laid off, but excited for the future of the Rock Band franchise, as this makes me think they have something big on the horizon.

Well, not everyone has a crappy phone, and not everyone uses the earpiece for games. 9 times out of 10, I'm using headphones when I play games on my phone, especially when it's music-based like this game is. If they make an iPhone/iTouch version of this game, I'll be all over it.