Why is it that no one is drawing attention to the fact that Guitar Hero III's controller is NOT backwards compatable? This is insane, if I may be so bold to say. Why is it so hard for Activision/Red Octane to understand that PS3 owners want to play GH/II/80's on their PS3? Suggestions for why this hasn't happen are mainly either A) They will re-sell you the songs in a Download Pack for 40+ dollars, or B) They will sell you another Guitar later on that is backwards compatable.

First of all though, lets see why exactly the guitar doesn't work in the first place. In my experience, the guitar doesnt work because the Dingle that plugs into the PS3 USB port doesn't power up during the switch over into the PS2 support hardware/software. (For the record, I have the original 60G Emotion Engine support in my PS3) So essencially, the reason we have this problem is becasue they don't support the Bluetooth format like the Sixaxis. Is it really cheaper to make little dingles that stick out of the front of the console then to put the proper wireless technology in it in the first place? The PS2 has the same dungle so maybe its a make one format instead of two thing. Nevertheless, this is completely unacceptable and frankly I am surprised that more people aren't up in arms about this whole thing. It is practically non existant on this particular site, unless I am missing it.

So how will we get our original Guitar Hero on? Via a Download pack for some rediculious amount of money to force gamers to buy the same damn game again? This is most likely what we will see in my opinnion. Why? Because of course, Activision/Red Octane like money. After all, a business is a business and who isn't in the business of making money? The thing that bugs me is that people WILL pay 30, 40, 50+ dollars for it if they do sell it like that. Why don't they realize that buy putting up the money so easily and without a fight, they give any power the consumer might have had so willingly? It is a real shame and unfortunetly it appears that not enough people think that $2.00 is much for a cover of Jukebox Hero no matter how good the band is. If they don't package it up for resale online however, another path maybe the resale of a guitar itself.

This new guitar path is much less likely in my opinnion. Why would they go back to the drawing board to redisign and repackage a whole different guitar specifically for the PS3? First of all, the PS3 is third in their selling bracket falling far behind X360 and Wii in sales. Another reason against this idea is the simple fact that who is really going to buy another guitar when they already have one? Sure its backwards compatible, but either A) those people already have the PS2 versions with their guitar and will just as well use their PS2 to play them as apposed to shelling out 60 bucks for a whole new guitar or B) they don't own the PS2 games so it wouldn't interrest them to buy one. Think about that last one though if you would. Especially with the resale of the two originals in one package, wouldn't this boost some salaes? At the very least, I am sure that Activision would notice a spike in sales of the original PS2 games after releasing a way to play them on PS3. Wishful thinking it would seem however.

Now what is the ideal fix for this very real problem? Why a simple patch would do it wouldn't it? Activision's official response, "The guitar hero games run on two completely differen't engines. Therefore you wouldn't be able to configure the controller to work with the older games." Thats what they told me in an email session. I asked them point blank why there was no patch to make the games accessible for those with backwards compatibility and that is the response I get. If by different engines they are talking about the slight change in hammer-ons and pull-offs between games, then that frankly is not a good enough answer. Unless someone has knowledge that I don't, there is no reason that I can see why they couldn't make a patch to fix that problem with the dangle not powering up, which is the only reason that I forsee why it isn't compatible in the first place. All in all though, I really don't understand why the recommended amount of people it would take to make something happen aren't out there making a storm on the internet or what not. Remember that we were promised backwards compatibility originally, even though they withdrew that, it really is rediculious in itself and is such a small thing that for a big company like that, you would think they could put the little extra effort it takes to satisfy their customer.