Famed gaming analyst Michael Pachter at Wedbush Morgan has now chimed in on the troubled couple, bluntly telling Gamasutra that "Activision doesn't 'need' Warner Music at all."

Warner started the fire by publicly complaining that video game studios, whether selling Guitar Hero or Harmonix's rival series Rock Band, don't pay record labels enough money for the rights to use those songs in the games. Activision countered by saying that Warner lacked respect for Guitar Hero.

Pachter's reasoning is straightforward: "There are over one million songs out there--probably two million--and Activision is going to turn fewer than a thousand of them into Guitar Hero songs every year." Furthermore, "they don't need to deal with a label that represents less than 20 percent of artists."

At center of the controversy is Warner's claim that players buy rhythm games, and their downloadable songs, for the music. Pachter disagrees. "You buy Guitar Hero for the game, and the song creates the challenge. It's quite different from an iTunes download, where the only purpose is to listen to the music."

The Shacknews staff, meanwhile, humbly believes that appearance in a music game is good for sales.