Buyers Complain of Faulty Guitar Hero World Tour Instruments

October 27, 2008 8:43 AM

Some buyers of Guitar Hero World Tour--which launched yesterday--are complaining of faulty instruments, mirroring the issues that afflicted last year's debut of the Harmonix-developed rival series Rock Band.

Complaints regarding the wireless drum kit focus on drum pads and cymbals that don't register every hit. The wireless guitar has also drawn criticism, with many, such as Shacknews' own GoS-CPT-Stewart and dblagent, finding that the guitars have stopped registering downward strums after a few hours.

Activision's official support forum for the game's instruments are filled with reports of the instrument failure across PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii--the four platforms that received Guitar Hero World Tour yesterday. In response, the forum administration has set up several dedicated threads that point to customer support.

However, at least one issue doesn't seem to stem from Guitar Hero publisher Activison. Despite a previous promise of instrument compatibility, PlayStation 3 owners have found that the Guitar Hero drum set is not recognized by the PS3 release of Harmonix's Rock Band 2, though some speculate Harmonix will resolve this in a patch.

The Xbox 360 version of Rock Band 2 apparently has no issues with GHWT instrument compatibility, as promised.

Developed by Neversoft for the PS3 and Xbox 360, with Vicarious Visions on the Wii edition and Budcat on the PS2, Guitar Hero World Tour is available in three forms: a standalone $50-$60 game, a $90-$100 wireless guitar bundle, and a $180-$190 band kit that packs the game, wirless guitar, wireless drum kit, and a wired microphone.

Chris Faylor

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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SiW.

 reply
October 27, 2008 8:49 AM

Remember when Guitar Hero was just a fun game and not $ERIOU$ BU$INE$$? :/
- FalseGod
  
   reply
  October 27, 2008 8:58 AM
  
  All the equipment works on mine so far. However, the game did RROD my 360 initially. I had everything hooked up, started up the game and it started locking up several times forcing me to reset. Eventually it stopped starting at all and RROD on me. So I unplugged everything from it, and reattached and only brought one thing online at a time. I have not yet gotten the guts to plug all the instruments back in, but I did play drums and guitar solo for several hours with no more problems.
  
  Since I left the microphone unplugged I am wondering if that is part of the problem, but I was having too much fun playing to take the chance of bricking it again.
  
  All my pads and the bass pedal work fine though, despite my suckiness on the drums. No issues with the guitar and I like it better than any of the previous ones. I didn't play for more than an hour on the guitar though, so the downstrum issue could still rear its ugly head.
- DMac20
  
   reply
  October 27, 2008 8:59 AM
  
  Yeah but paying $189.99 + tax for "a fun game" and shit not working IS serious business. These companies (Harmonix/Activsion) don't test their products well and it shows. Their "get the money now, we'll fix/patch it later" attitude is sickening.
  - SiW.
    
     reply
    October 27, 2008 9:30 AM
    
    Right, that was my point; when the first game came out the hardware just worked, they'd spent a long time developing it and it showed. Then the game blew up and the sequels came, profit margins had to be maximized.
    - DMac20
      
       reply
      October 27, 2008 10:41 AM
      
      Ahh, that flew right over my head. My bad