REVIEWS Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D Review
Gamers have gone bananas for Nintendo's 3DS, but can this port of Retro Studios' 2010 Wii game make the jump to your portable?

Pandora's Tower Review
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but swords and chains excite me. Should you climb the towers in Xseed's JRPG/adventure hybrid to save your cursed (and tragically whiny) girlfriend?

PREVIEWS The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot Preview
Ah, the joys of destroying your friend's castle and the pains of your friend destroying yours. Alas, such is friendship.

Watch Dogs (PS4) Preview

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger Preview

Release Dates

NEW RELEASES Metro: Last Light
Release date: Out Now

GRiD 2
Release date: 05/28/13

Fuse
Release date: 05/28/13

The Last of Us
Release date: 06/14/13

DAILY MANIFESTO

Rock Band Repairs

Posted on Thursday, November 29 @ 21:52:18 Eastern by Duke_Ferris

Product-a-day takes on Rock Band this time because of all the reported hardware problems. Turns out Harmonix isn't any happier with busted peripherals than gamers are.

After all, it costs them money having to fix, ship, and replace all those guitars (the guitars seem to have the predominant failure rate), and they are committed to shipping a now-solid product.

Full disclosure department: GR tested two Rock Band bundles, one from Harmonix's public relations firm, and one purchased at the store. Both were not fully functional. Subsequent half-assed research found the problem to be more widespread.

Fortunately this did not spoil our Rock Band office party since the 360 Guitar Hero controllers are also compatible with Rock Band in an exceedingly smart move by Harmonix.

However, it's still good to see a manufacturer stand behind their product 100% and commit themselves to improving it. When I spoke to "Harmonix Spokesperson" (what an odd name, she must have had strange parents) earlier today I was pleased to get the following commitment and apology to all the rocking gamers out there.

"As sometimes happens when new products first go into manufacturing, we discovered an imperfection with the strum bar in an early production run of guitars that were shipped at launch. We want to inform you that we have since identified and fixed the issue in all subsequent production runs of the guitars. If you are experiencing a problem with your guitar or any of your other Rock Band instruments, simply visit the customer support website (http://support.ea.com/rockband) and we will send a replacement immediately. Harmonix is dedicated to creating 100% customer satisfaction and to those of you who've encountered any hardware issues, we are sorry for the hassle."

Well said.

Comments

UglykitteN
Joined: Mar 2006

Posted: Nov 29th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Well, at least they admit there is a problem. Would this be a deal-breaker for those who haven't bought the game yet? I'm considering buying a 360 in the future and Rock Band was at the top of the list. Should I wait till everything gets sorted out? Or, as far as you can tell, does this just seem to be a minor problem?

0 0

Odbarc
Joined: Apr 2007

Posted: Nov 30th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Is it just me or does it seem like everyone is getting sloppy when it comes to developing anything for anyone these days? Buggy game releases, broken hardware releases, hackable software releases. Is it because the technology is harder to understand or are the people less able to understand it? What's to blame?!

0 0

Padain
Joined: Mar 2007

Posted: Nov 30th, 2007 at 2:06 am
at least they admited to it, thats better than a lot of other companies out there

0 0

ohsostupid
Joined: Nov 2007

Posted: Nov 30th, 2007 at 4:13 am
If only Microsoft had acted so quickly when they discovered all these 360 problems. It's also nice that this message came from Harmonix direct and they didn't just fob you off to EA.

0 0

acdibble
Joined: Jul 2007

Posted: Dec 1st, 2007 at 12:55 pm
GG Harmonix. GG.

0 0