@Alpha,
Activision does have a say if another company is trying to use its licensed products for profit with another IP. Why did you think Activision went after all those 3rd party guitar peripheral makers, because they weren't getting a cut of the fake Guitar sells that was for made to play Guitar Hero. You see console makers license out their peripherals with the rights to make a game for the console. No such agreement is there for for 3rd party developers who come up with own peripherals even though some companies use it, i.e. microphones, cameras and game controller devices. Yea it would be nice that all the companies would play nice and think about the consumers happiness, but let wake up in the real world here, they are out to make as much money as they can for the least amount of investment. EA could easily step in and start paying license fees to use the Les Paul controller but why would they? So you don't have to buy a peripheral that they are getting a chunk of cash for. Activision could easily allow Harmonix, the company who left them for MTV/EA, to incorporate the Guitar Hero code to use the guitar controller but why would they? So people can buy a game that is in direct competition with it and not receive any kind of fees for hardware creation, production and licensing fee for Gibson name rights.
Bottom line, Harmonix should never have promised something in the end that they have no control over, in this case another manufacturer property. Activision should be reasonable and work out an agreement that would benefit both parties and stop looking like jerks. (you can be one, but don't look like one)
As for Nintendo telling Activision what to do, it would be like Panasonic DVD makers telling Warner Bros Pictures what to do. That is the downside to a lot consoles on the market, there is always the other guy you can go sell your wares on. And in the great console wars, no one wants to be the company that doesn't have such and such publisher on it. Go ask Betamax, Sega game consoles, and more recently HD-DVD how well that has worked out for them.
I'm just saying...
