July 16, 2008

Guitar Hero: World Tour Works With Rock Band Drums!

Per a late-breaking entry on Wired’s game blog, Guitar Hero: World Tour will work with the Rock Band drumset! Well, at least on the Xbox 360, anyway.

At Activision’s E3 press conference Tuesday, Guitar Hero director Brian Bright told the crowd that if they already owned guitar controllers and drum controllers from “previous games” on the Xbox 360, they’d work with Guitar Hero World Tour.

guitar-hero-4-drum-track

Here’s how it’ll work. Speaking with Bright after the conference, I found out that the game’s five-button drum track, shown above center, will be compressed down to four inputs if a Rock Band drum controller is inserted.

There’s also a MIDI jack on the back of the drum kit, Bright said, which will allow gamers to play Guitar Hero with any electronic drum kit by simply plugging it into the controller. You can also hook up a second drum pedal if you want to play two bass drums.

This is a surprising turn of events, as previous Guitar Hero games have gone out of their way to ensure incompatibility with Rock Band peripherals, despite Harmonix’ calls for (and implementation of) open guitar peripheral compatibility. I presume this means Guitar Hero: World Tour will also work with Rock Band guitars, too.

Still, the prospect of being able to limit yourself to just one set of fake plastic drums instead of two is big news indeed. Kudos to the Activision team for not being jerks about it this time around.

I wonder if the new Rockband 2 drum sets will enable the 5th input as they have cymbals. It’s great to not have to buy a new drum set, but I’d like to experience the full game with the future Rockband 2 drum set if possible (that Ion set looks so good).

Sapin
July 16, 2008 at 4:06 am

I agree with the sentiment and surprise. After all the arguing about the guitar input issue, I did not hold out any hope for the drums. I’m no game developer, but doesn’t it seem like a lot more work to make the drums compatible, compared to the guitar? Is Activision bipolar?

Will
July 16, 2008 at 8:09 am

I don’t think so — the GHWT drum set has 3 drums, 2 cymbals, 1 pedal whereas the Rock Band drumset has 4 drums, 1 pedal. Note that in Rock Band any of the drums can “substitute” for cymbals. I suspect they’re going to compress out some of the cymbal notes in GHWT to make the note chart fit. That should work out OK, but who knows until we see reviews.

But yes, that is a concern — if the GHWT drum note patters are mutiliated badly to “fit” the RB 4 drums, 1 pedal input model, that’d be a bummer.

Jeff Atwood
July 16, 2008 at 2:46 pm

well the 4drum vs 3drum 2cymbal problem should be fixed november 30 when the cymbal expansion for rb2 drums is released

Mark-o
November 5, 2008 at 6:51 am

Note that this solution works only for the Xbox 306.

I’ve found that the drums for Rock Band do not work with World Tour for the Wii. The indicator light lights up, but the none of the controller lights (the little boxes 1,2,3 and 4) don’t light up at all.

M

Matthew Hodgson
November 29, 2008 at 11:02 pm

Why does the cymbal kit only work with rock band drums????

Matt
December 21, 2008 at 3:49 pm

@Matthew Hodgson:

‘only for Xbox 306′ isn’t correct (aside from the spelling error)… you’re forgetting the PS3 version. From what I’ve heard so far, it’s just the Wii that’s being stupid.

Jake
January 11, 2009 at 10:07 am

It’s great to hear that RB drums work with GH4 but on Guitar Hero 4 how do you use the star power for the drums when there are no sybols to activae the star power??

Callum PB
January 13, 2009 at 3:24 pm

you carn’t use star power if you are useing rock band drumkit

MIKE
February 24, 2009 at 7:59 am

Any idea when the wii will get on board?

Barbara
April 11, 2009 at 7:53 pm

Late comment I know, but to use star power on GH:WT using RB drums, it’s yellow and blue (i.e. the middle two pads.)

DT
September 24, 2009 at 3:21 pm

Leave a comment