Source: videogamesblogger.com

Michael Shorrock, Director of Publisher Relations at SCEA, announced on the PlayStation blog that PlayStation 3 guitars and drum sets will all feature a basic level of gameplay compatibility. This means that the titles with musical peripherals will work with the other’s software. Activision-Blizzard made a similar Xbox 360 cross-game instrument compatibility statement at their E3 press conference last month. It’s a big improvement over the past music game indstruments incompatibility. Below you’ll find their comments listed.

List of compatible PS3 games:
* Guitar Hero: World Tour’s guitars and drums will work with Rock Band 2 and Rock Revolution. Guitar Hero: World Tour also supports the SingStar microphones.
* Rock Band 2’s guitar and drum set will work with Guitar Hero: World Tour and with Rock Revolution. Rock Band 2 also supports the SingStar microphones.
* Rock Revolution’s drum set will work with both Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2.

List of compatible Xbox 360 games:
* Guitar Hero: World Tour will be compatible with the instruments for the first Rock Band. Other third-party guitar and drum controllers are expected to work with Guitar Hero: World Tour as well.
* Guitar Hero: World Tour plans to be compatible with instruments from Rock Band 2 as well. Since Rock Band 2 isn’t out yet, they haven’t been able to test those instruments with Guitar Hero: World Tour, but the fact that they hope to make it compatible could mean a cross-compatibility patch later on if it’s not already available at launch.
* Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, after a recent auto-downloaded title update, should make that game compatible with non-Guitar Hero guitars, including the Rock Band guitars.

Sony added that as far as further PlayStation compatibility goes, they are “still working hard to ensure compatibility between the Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles currently on the market, and we hope to have an announcement on that shortly.”

Via Sony and MTV

Source: videogamesblogger.com

In an interview at CES 2008 this week Albert Penello, group marketing manager for the Xbox 360, was asked if there would be any future Xbox 360 backwards compatibility updates coming from Microsoft. His reply indicated the November 2007 Xbox 360 backwards compatibility update might have been the last one.

To quote: “I don’t know if we have plans to do any more releases. It feels like we kind of hit the point of diminishing returns there. I know with the Xbox Originals, there are still things happening there, but in terms of a lot of engineering work around bringing out new titles, I think they’re winding that down.”

Microsoft’s original promise for backwards compatibility updates was to focus on the “top selling” original Xbox titles. This, Mr. Penello said, from a corporate standpoint, was delivered upon. To quote: “For the most part, we’ve crossed off games that people want to play. There’s always going to be a notable exception here or there. — At this point the stuff that’s left is work per title, every title now is almost a one-off. Right now we have to think, are we really going to do 300 one-off titles? I know it’s not exactly the answer everyone wants to hear, but I feel like it’s time.”

He then told Kotaku that, outside of Halo 2, internal data points to low numbers of backward compatible games being played on Live, with BC updates “not being downloaded that much anymore.” — Here’s an idea Microsoft, how about doing the top 5 or top 10 most requested Xbox games that are left? Problem solved.

Xbox Originals are already starting to be added to with next Monday, January 14th, seeing the addition of Burnout 3: Takedown to the list of Xbox Originals. Good move in light of Burnout Paradise being released the week after on January 22nd. Burnout 3 will be release worldwide, except for Japan, at a price of 1400 Microsoft Points (that’s US$17.50 / €16.80 / £11.90 / CAN$21.70 / AU$23.10). It’s not yet clear if the by EA-supported servers online functionality (that went offline long ago) will be revived for this re-release.