Red Octane's new wireless guitars, but what's Xbox 360's extra cost?
Red Octane showed us their new wireless controllers coming to Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii with the release of Guitar Hero III this fall. The Wii version (seen above), allows you to put your Wiimote into it via a flap in the back. There is no word yet on why you would need to do this, if it's only to activate "star power" it just seems a little superfluous. The rest of the controllers look fine and the buttons are in the perfect place so you don't "pull a Peter Moore" in GH III like you would in Rock Band. In all fairness, Harmonix is already planning a software fix so gamers don't do the same thing as Moore.
The best part about the new guitars is that you can take the guitar's neck off of the body by toggling a switch in the back and pulling. They wouldn't let us take pictures of this and they had none available. The new separation feature makes storage and travel easier, it also opens up the option for different types of necks. Also, there were an assortment of quality plastic faceplates which snap onto the guitar and come off easily by pressing an eject button on the back. Because all the faceplates were "prototypes" we couldn't take pictures of those either. Anyway, the new Red Octane guitars look and feel really good. Oh, and they moved the Xbox's guide button and d-pad higher up the guitar's body to get it out of your wrist's way. They also put the select (back) button within pinky length of the fret to activate star power by easily moving a finger instead of jarring the guitar. The redesign really looks great.
The weird news was Red Octane's cagey attitude towards pricing between systems, the same thing we experienced with Harmonix about Rock Band. Following Rock Band's unconfirmed price difference between Xbox 360 and PS3 wireless guitars, it looks like Red Octane hasn't made a decision regarding their pricing of the Xbox 360 controller either. Will they charge more for the licensing fee attached to using Microsoft's proprietary wireless? And what is the extra cost? They will supposedly get back to us as soon an answer can be authorized. Yeah, this Microsoft wireless drama is just ridiculous, especially if it forces the peripheral manufacturers to punish the consumers for Microsoft's greed.
