Sony Finally Offering Controller Compatibility for Music Games

Sony has finally convinced Activision, Harmonix and Konami to make their respective music game controllers compatible with one another on its PlayStation 3 console.

The announcement came Wednesday when Michael Shorrock, director of publisher relations at SCEA posted the news on the official PlayStation blog. "While SCEA had a ton of great announcements at E3, I'm excited to say, we have one more for today, one that I know a lot of you have been asking about."

Now, PS3 owners will be able to buy one guitar, for example, that will work with both Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2. Even the different drum sets will be compatible with the rival games, and SingStar owners will finally have a dignified use for their microphones.

Of course, there will be certain features offered by each game that will require its own controller to take advantage of, however, for the most part, instruments for Guitar Hero: World Tour, Rock Band 2 and Rock Revolution will all offer "a basic level of gameplay compatibility."

Sony's appeal for compatibility was one of great importance to the company, granted the popularity of these kinds of music games. Guitar Hero and Rock Band controllers have long been compatible with one another on Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, and had Sony failed to secure the developers' promises of compatibility, it could have seen Microsoft take the lead in sales.