It's like a supergroup... but with guitar hardware... sort of...
Over the US fans of Rock Band have hit a problem we saw coming a loooong way off... the lack of guitar controllers in the box set.For those of you that don;t know, Rock Band let's you play drums, lead and bass guitar and sing... obviously not all at the same time with one person, but you and three friends can form your own virtual Rock Band, with one on drums, two on guitars and one singing... except that the massive box-set of instruments has only one guitar... meaning bass players are left banging a dustbin lid rather than joining in with the rest of the band.
Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem as you've just go out and buy the missing guitar controller... but you can't. Rock band is selling so well over in the US that individual controllers, guitar or otherwise, just aren't available, everything is going into the full box sets and with those coming in at a cool $320 USD, you'd have to be either mad or seriously minted to buy a second box-set just to have the extra guitar.
Now you could well claim that this is something of a major oversight by EA to not give you full Rock Band four player goodness out of the box, but I have a feeling that the cost of a 'full' set plus the game would perhaps make Rock Band more expensive than the console you're going to play it on, which may well be why EA went for a cut-down package in the first place.
Anyhoo, there is a some good news. Over on the Rock Band forums there's been an announcement that the PS3 version will shortly be getting an update... this update will let you use your Guitar Hero III controller with Rock Band, giving you that fabled second guitar and letting you rock out the way Harmonix intended.
Since the patch was first mentioned there's been no further news, or indeed an sign of the patch, but if it is on the way then it's all to the good as you'll either already have GH3 or will be able to pick up a copy of that and a controller for far less cash than buying a second Rock Band kit.
(insert suitable rock cliche here. Word)
