Konami wants music peripherals to be universally compatible

[cleveland124]

Gnizmo said:

Mise said:

whacker41 said:
This sounds like it could benefit many players. What's the point in buying Separate peripherals for different games, if they could easily be compatible with one another?

Money. You'll have to shell out much more cash for 5 game-spesific peripherals than for a single universal one, even if the universal thing is more expensive.

In business, greed often overrides common sense.

From a business perspective it is better to sell one game then not sell one. Conflicting peripherals means fewer people buying your game due to the barrier for of entry being so high. More people are willing to pay 50/60 rather than 170. It is less business greed, and more malice and an attempt to drive your competitor out of business.

 

Bingo, it's the guitar hero vs. rock band war.  The companies make a bit of money on stand alone accessories, but you can find rock band for $150.  Stand alone accesories run $60 guitar/$50 drums/$30 mike.  So they can't make that much more of a margin by selling the bundle versus just selling the game.  It's a stupid game because there is enough rythum fans to keep both series going strong.  We'll see if Guitar Hero realizes this when they see that despite the fact that GH4 is superior to Rock Band, it will sell less due to people not wanting a second fake drum set.  (By sell worse, I'm excluding those that will get it just for guitar purposes).  They probably won't care because they'll still make tons of money.