Here we have a video game company making the same classic mistake as any other internet company. That trying to keep to a closed system is better than opening up for all.

Activision Blocks Rock Band Patch, Kills GHIII Guitar Support

The thought process behind Activision is pretty obvious. Rock band is by far their biggest competitor and quite frankly, has more of the “buzz” right now. The idea is, as long as there isn’t compatibility, they will not lose users to RB, and that most will continue following the GH series, which they have already grown to love.

So here is the problem as I see it. Activision has misjudged the reason behind the mainstream success of these Rhythm games. The popularity of these two games is not due to the fact that they are selling to the mainstream public. The popularity is that they are selling to a large percentage of hardcore gamers (so that they can then play with their mainstream public friends). We are talking about 400$ ps3, or 300$ Xbox on top of the $170 for RB. That is not a main stream public price point.

The hardcore gamer though, are exactly the people who pay attention to things like compatibility and are the exact same who will get highly pissed when a company makes such a overt money grab. Essentially, Activision PR is shooting themselves in the foot. The worst part for them? We are talking about a patch that is for Rock Band which does not actually affect Guitar Hero 3 as a game in the least. There really is no reason for Sony to be holding it up, and at some point, it will be released. The end result will be a bunch of people being upset at GH3 and vowing not to buy it anymore and good PR for Harmonix with their “we just want gamers to be happy” mantra (so also: EA giving out free games due to faulty controllers). All of which is just going to make people switch to Rock Band, its just a self fulfilling prophecy.

We are seeing here the same thing we see everywhere else on the internet, Open will always beat Closed. When you make the customers happy, they will reward you with success. Harmonix is making the customers happy, Activision is going out of its way to make customers upset, if this was something you can bet on, its as close to a sure bet as you can get in gaming.