A post on the official PlayStation Blog has announced significantly improved compatibility between music peripherals on the PS3. It marks the first steps to achieving a much smoother and more efficient experience when playing the growing range of music titles such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
Many of you will remember the uproar when it became apparent that there were compatibility issues when trying to use Rock Band guitars with Guitar Hero, and vice versa. In fact, a lot of you were probably affected by it and forced to buy another guitar. Annoyingly, compatibility was far better for Xbox 360 users.
Well good news from Michael Shorrock, Director of 3rd Party Relations at SCEA. He has revealed a number of compatibility improvements for the mentioned titles, as well as SingStar and Konami’s Rock Revolution. It is a little confusing, so you may want to read it over a few times:
"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."
It’s good to see that Sony is working on improving cross-title peripheral support behind the scenes as the thought of having to buy new guitars and microphones for each IP is rather frightening (mostly for our wallets).
"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," Shorrock added.