I’m beginning to wonder just how seriously some people take things like NDAs and industry secrets. Take for instance this screenshot that was recently shown on G4. I highly doubt that Harmonix wanted this to be seen, as it lists 11 tracks in Rock Band 2, 9 of which have not been announced. Of course I harbor no feeling of remorse for passing along the info to you guys.

One thing you should keep in mind is that Harmonix is constantly changing which tracks are going to be included for DLC (I would imagine the same holds true for the songs included on the RB2 disc). I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of these didn’t make the cut.

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So, as most of you probably know by now, the Les Paul Guitar Hero controller for the PS3 does not work with Rock Band. Thankfully last week Harmonix completed a patch for the PS3 version of the game that allowed this controller to work with Rock Band. The patch was submitted to Sony, but wasn’t made for download. So what happened?

Rumors have been flying around as to what actually became of the patch. The most prominent being that Activision (publishers of Guitar Hero 3) stepped in and barred the patch from being released. Sadly, today that rumor was confirmed. Here is the post from the official Rock Band forums from the Harmonix team:

PS3 Guitar Compatibility - UPDATE 12/12/2007

Hi Everyone,

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 compatibility patch’s release. 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 will also adopt this philosophy.

Sincerely,
The Harmonix Team

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Guess who’s back at number one? That’s right, after a few more reviews came in, Super Mario Galaxy fell to the number two slot, once again making The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time the greatest game ever.

When we last looked in on the rankings, the latest Mario title boasted an average score of 97.9%. This has now fallen to 97.4%. All is right again in the universe.

This really makes me wonder, will there ever be a game great enough to beat it?

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Remember those small issues with Assassin’s Creed on the PS3 that I told you about the other day? You know, the ones that made the game almost unplayable for some people. Well those of you experiencing this issue may finally get to enjoy the game, bug-free.

An Ubisoft UK Community Manager has confirmed that they are indeed working on a game update that should improve the stability of the game. When is it coming? “As soon as possible.”

There’s nothing quite as reassuring as a patch that’s coming “ASAP.” I’m sure there are plenty of reasons why they can’t give us even a vague time frame, so lets just be happy that they’re working on it.

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I don’t know if you ever played the Guitar Hero 80’s expansion for the PS2, but apparently it may end up costing Activision a hefty chunk of change.

No, there’s no class action lawsuit against them for releasing a sub-par game for an outrageous price (wouldn’t it be great if you could do that?). Rather, they are being sued by the Romantics, which had their song ‘What I like About You’ featured in the game. Activision secured the rights to include a cover of the song in that game, what they didn’t realize is their cover band was too good at their job.

The Romantics are now suing Activision because their cover sounds too much like the original, and people might get confused. Really guys, what is there to be confused about? It specifically states that the song was “Made famous by the Romantics.” I doubt this would hurt album sales for the washed-up one-hit wonders, as anyone that liked the song enough to purchase it would still be buying their album.

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Feigned and I help run a guild, so when we heard rumors about a guild bank coming to WoW we were stoked. Then the day came when it finally arrived and the guild all chipped in and paid an arm and a leg per each tab. Thus far we have had no issues and have loved the convenience that came with the new bank. However, there are those that are encountering major problems.

Apparently, at the moment the withdrawal limits are not reset when a character joins a new guild. If you’re an officer when you leave a guild, you still have the officer banking rights when you join a new one, even if you’re a lowly recruit. Therefore people are withdrawing things from the guild bank and then leaving the guild. Once they have done so they mail the loot off to another character or just switch servers.

Our guild (Knights of the Winnebago) has about 350 members and even with that amount, a loot like that would leave us hurting pretty badly. We decided to pull all of our gold out of the bank just as an extra precaution till the issue is solved. Right now the only other solution is for the guild master to manually reset a recruits bank rights immediately after they join up. Blizzard is currently working to resolve the issue.

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The site has been up for less than a week and I’m already posting my first rant. By now I’m sure that everyone has heard about the news surrounding Manhunt 2, so I’ll spare you the back story. However, there is a new development that I find particularly disturbing. Apparently four US Senators are calling for a “thorough review” of the ESRB because of it all.

Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh and Sam Brownback are the ones calling for the investigation. Naturally, all four of them have been highly critical of the entire gaming industry for some time now. You’d think that in the years since Hot Coffee that they would have taken some time to understand just how video games, and the ESRB work. It’s quite apparent that they have not.

Essentially, they are upset that the game did not receive an ‘AO’ rating. As anyone that plays video games knows, many stores won’t carry titles that have earned such a rating, and some companies such as Nintendo won’t even allow them to be played on their consoles. Essentially, a game with an ‘AO’ rating would likely be a disaster.

There are two main reasons why they are upset about the game’s rating. First, they believe that the game contains “unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone.” Secondly, due to the nature of the Wii’s controller, it “permits children to act out each of the many graphic torture scenes and murders.”

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I’ve been hearing about the rumored PlayStation Phone for longer than I care to remember. No one’s really been able to get a straight answer from Sony. Their responses have been dodgy at best. However, the Economic Times has managed to coax the closest thing to a real response out of them that I’ve heard yet. Apparently Jim Ryan, the Sony Computer Entertainment co-chief operating officer was quoted as saying the following.

“The PlayStation is a proven success and so is Sony Ericsson. Convergence with the two arms working together is definitely plausible,” he said. “What has been done is finding a match between a camera and a mobile phone, and that has been done wherein the mobile phone features are not reasonably inhibited and the camera is also a reasonably competitive product. It is hugely intellectually seductive to have a console-oriented phone.”

It’s one of those things that I think we’ve all seen coming, though I can’t say that I’m really excited about it. Sony Ericsson phones haven’t really been anything to write home about, and I wouldn’t say that the PSP has exactly been a the hit Sony wanted it to be. Then you look at the only other phone/game console combo, which is the Nokia N-gage, and it failed miserably. Could a PlayStation phone do any better? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

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We’re all Guitar Heroes here at GamerFront, so you can bet that we love new content. It’s been pretty hard to pull us away from Rock Band though. We’ll have to make a little time over the weekend for the latest GH III downloadable track: the Halo theme song.

That’s right, Microsoft and Activision are bringing you yet another track for free. Granted, the Boss Battle pack never should have happened in the first place, but it was still a good guesture.

One has to wonder if the timing for this latest freebie has anything to do with the launch of Rock Band. Surely not.

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It seems like the Wiimote has almost as many crazy accessories as the iPod. Swords, zappers, boxing gloves, you name it. It’s only been a matter of time before someone created a lightsaber attachement, especially after Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga allowed you to control a lightsaber with your Wiimote for the first time.

Thankfully, someone heard the cries of would-be Jedi across the land and created the perfect accessory. The Wii Light Sword has 22 ultra bright blue LEDs that are powered by 3 AA batteries.

The $31 you spend on it won’t improve your lightsaber skills, however, it will make you look like a complete idiot real Jedi. You can bet that this one is on my Christmas list.

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