With Rock Band and Guitar Hero III both competing for new homes, the controversy around saving gamers the extra expense of having to own a guitar for each game seemed odd since they did the same thing. Apparently, Harmonix and MTV Games felt the same way. They claim to have created a patch for Rock Band for PlayStation 3 that makes the Rock Band guitar peripheral compatible with Activision's Guitar Hero III. The claim continues by saying that Sony won't release the patch because of objections by Activision, one assumes the objection comes from the company's desire to sell more of its guitars. On the Xbox 360, all the Guitar Hero guitar controllers already work with all of its competitor's games.

As of press time, Activision and RedOctane had not replied to a GameDaily BIZ inquiry.

A statement, released on Wednesday afternoon from a representative for Harmonix and MTV Games reads:

"As we have said in the past, Harmonix and MTV Games believe in an open standard philosophy of hardware and game compatibility. We think that there should be interoperability between music instrument controllers across all music games. This is clearly in the best interest of consumers, game developers and console manufacturers and will only help to grow the music game genre as well as inspire innovation and creativity.

Two weeks ago, Harmonix created a software patch for the Sony PLAYSTATION 3 version of Rock Band that allowed for guitar compatibility and support for third party peripherals, including enabling use of Activision's Guitar Hero III controller with Rock Band. The compatibility patch was submitted, approved and had been scheduled for release by Sony on Tuesday, December 4. Unfortunately, Activision objected to the release of the compatibility patch. The patch remains with Sony, but we have been told that it will unfortunately not be released due to Activision's continued objection.

As is the case with the Microsoft Xbox360, we believe that Sony PLAYSTATION 3 users should be able to use the peripheral of their choice with Rock Band. We sincerely hope that Activision will reverse its decision and allow release of the compatibility patch and further, that Activision will allow Guitar Hero III to support Rock Band guitar controllers as well. We welcome all third party developers who wish to support our controllers and will provide any required support in order for them to do so.

We believe that when consumers have choice, everyone wins. Harmonix and MTV Games hope that Activision and others in the industry will also adopt this philosophy."