According to the official Guitar Hero II forums, Red Octane, tired of people weeping, and wringing their hands with grief over the spotty performance of their shiny, new whammy bars, has released a patch for Guitar Hero II via Xbox LIVE that should alleviate the issue.
The humor only begins there, though, as reading the thread where they announced the patch reveals that 90% of all replies were from people who installed the patch and subsequently had their 360s (metaphorically) catch fire, run around the room screaming, and collapse in utter agony. The symptoms seem pretty similar in all cases, with people having downloaded the patch and experiencing frequent lock-ups soon after. Compounding that thread o' bad news, is this thread over on the official Xbox forum filled to bursting with people whose 360s seem to have murdered themselves upon contact with the patch.
Thankfully, I lucked out and my whammy bar works like a German clock, but now I'm terrified to download this patch until Red Octane hires a QA department that isn't paid in cocaine and barbiturates. If any of you guys have borked your systems with this patch, hit up the comments. The general consensus is that you're going to have to RMA the system back to Microsoft, so it isn't like you have anything better to do, right?
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Oh, and I couldn't work this in anywhere, but:
Sending broken 360s back to Microsoft? Unheard of!
Am I the only person that Xbox.com doesn't work for when using FireFox?
hey, i rocked all day and had no system problems what-so-ever. My guitar has the bad serial# but the wammy worked fine so maybe this has somthing to do with the defected guitars only.
Wouldn't cocaine and barbiturates cancel each other out? I have a new science experiment to try this weekend!
@mxyzptlk
actually cocaine and barbie's only make you think they cancel eachother out, in reality around two am your heart go BOOM
When are they going to "patch" that fucked up pricing scheme for the song packs? That's what I want to know.
This seems to be a serious problem. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft "resolve" this issue.
Had it running almost 6 hours a day since launch no probs. even after the patch.
That cartoon btw makes me lol as I think that all the time.
Mine was okay, played about 2 hours today.
My whammy wored fine for the first week. earlier this week, it crapped out on me once or twice
I think i'll wait and see how this issue will be resolved before i fire up GHII again
That picture is the truth.
beer_baron: My Firefox used to work fine for the website but lately it is completely broken. MS must have changed something.
And on topic: My whammy bar responded maybe 30% of the time before the patch and now it responds 100% of the time. My 360 didn't break either.
The website works fine for me on Firefox
I didn't get a patch when I loaded up Guitar Hero yesterday. Weird.
Patched my copy and my 360 is still alive and kicking. I'm dreading the day it kicks the bucket though, I mean, it's still a launch day machine, so I'm biting my nails each time I get a new game.
For some reason, I think that son of a bitch BioShock is going to do my 360 in.
Downloaded the patch just after midnight and played for 4 hours without anny problems. Well, time will tell...
Well, I never installed the patch but Wal-Mart should be expecting my ghII coming back within the morning. this is bullshit, and they are not keeping my $90 after pulling stunts like this.
Christ, don't they test these things?
Nice picture, Nex.
Wow, Red Octane really fucked up huh.
Fuck, I updated it yesterday without knowledge of that issue. I´ve played Guitar Hero for about 1 or 2 hours and it worked fine. I hope this doesn´t change.
Wow. You know, the whammy bar works just fine on my PS2 with GH2. For that matter, it works fine on GH1 as well, for $60 cheaper than the download cost of all those songs on Xbox Live.
I almost went out and got GH2 for the 360 just for the download content, but decided to pass on it and just hook up my old PS2 again. After reading about the whammy bar problems and the current download selection (and price), I'm glad I went the cheap & easy route.
I've had 3 products from RedOctane ever; 2 Igniton Dance Mats, and 2 GHII controllers. All but one dance mat were defective either out of the box or within 24 hours of purchase.
I wrote them a letter when my second guitar went defective and asked if they tested anything, along with what to do about my guitar. They told me to return my guitar to where I bought it and didn't tell me about their in-depth testing procedures.
"4 products" Me no good for math.
yeah.. im on my fourth 360.. but i hope this patch (i just downloaded it, then found this article, dang) dosnt make me send in my current 360 for a fifth one. i had to wait 3 months for the one i have now. (it got bricked by the update on halloween)
Prior to Guitar Hero, I'd bought 2 fighting joysticks from them (when they did that sorta thing) and 1 worked perfectly, the other one broke and had to be replaced 3 times before I gave up, asking for my money back.
Suprisingly, GH1 worked fine for me, and I was pleased.
This time, I don't know if it's RO showing their true colors again or if it's just shitty testing on Activision's/RO's part, but I'll be goddamned if I'm going to put GH2 in again until I hear about a VERIFIED working second patch. I'm too leery of RO to bother using my console as a guinea pig for their piss poor QA testing.
My $90 = (flush)
my 360 got bricked BEFORE the update. not sure that the update is the issue.
with the new Halo 2 maps coming out, i feel like Red Octane has bent me over the barrel.
hard.
I downloaded and only used the update to play 7 songs in quick play mode with a friend. No problems yet here, but no extensive play either.
if systems couldn't be hooked up to the internet for patches these days, i think every company under the sun would be f'ed up the butt. yes, even nintendo has had recent problems with super paper mario i believe it was. i don't know why, but no one seems to do any qa testing before launching products anymore because they can "just patch it." clearly the patches don't work, either.
please, god, where did the good ol' days of systems and games that worked go? please bring them back. thanks.
Well if it makes you feel better it used to be a pain when PC games shipped with bugs and you had to contact customer support to have them send you a disk with the patch because there were no internets. I don't really think its the developers getting lazy so much as the publishers getting pushy and skimping on QA since they can just patch it. Its cheaper than doing a recall and until gamers decide to drop a few class-action suits nothing will change.
MORE bad news for the 360... If only Sony would do something positive now we could have a real console war.
I downloaded the patch last night and so far the only thing that has happened was that one of the songs froze for a second or two in the middle of it. It had never happened before I got the patch, but I don't think it's related.
Oh, and I had that problem with Firefox earlier but now it's working fine.
I guess Destruction members are immune to patch problems. BTW, this is one problem that can't be laid MS' feet, this is all Red Octane. MS has had their issues, but the GHII stuff (including the DLC) isn't one of them.
@Mac
I wasn't blaming Microsoft, but it's still bad press. Of course since no "real" people seem to be having problem this seems to be exaggerated. Conspiracy?
I dodged a bullet there... I'm never downloading a patch again...except a gears patch... okay I'm lying.
Conspiracy indeed! Its Sony fanboys/Sony PR! Reggie snuck into everyones house and took a hammer to the Xboxes!
Here's what I don't get. I thought that the controller had a bad connection in the wammy bar, so wouldn't that be a hardware problem? Why would RO even try to fix it with a software patch?
Yeah so basically I'm screwed here. GH2 breaks my 360. MS says it will cost me $120. Dear Lord, I hope us ripped off peeps get together and get this handled or else follow the American dream: sue for WAY over the amount of what I want.
Well, I guess this is what you get for playing a GuitarFreaks ripoff. :)
After dealing with underpayed employees and a multitude of managers, I got my $96 back! And I won't be buying anything from Activision ever again.
Ahahaha...
As I’ve said before, the whammy on my guitar from the original [i]Guitar Hero [/]might sink on its own, but at least it’s recognized by the game. PS2 FTW!
Still doesn't seem like a ton of people are being affected by the update. But I'm sure as shit not loading it up till this whole thing blows over. And who the hell knows then that'll be..
no problems here. :/
Geeze, between this and the pricey song packs, maybe its a good idea I just stuck with my PS2 version.
Haha, before reading this I decided not to update the times I played, now i definitely won't.
I am so thankful that I got a 2 year standard warranty for my 360. It has saved my bacon 2 times so far. And every time I return the broken 360 I get a new 2 year warranty. God I love Icelandic laws ;) Every consumer device has to have a standard 2 years warranty from the seller.
Im feel for you with the limited warranty you get in the US. Thankfully Microsoft has at least started to offer better warranty. Not perfect, but better.
I downloaded the update and it works fine. Everyone on my friends list says it works fine too. Sucks for everyone else.
As I've seen so many times before, the larger number of people reporting problems are reporting them either on Red Octane's site, or MS's site. That's not to say there isn't a problem, but it may appear bigger than it really is (affected population wise).
I've had my 360 for over a year. My power supply was bad, but mine was replaced completely free, even shipping was paid for.
For those who've had to ship their 360's for repair/replacement, especially those who've done it multiple times, you've got every right to be pissed, but I'd really like to see the total number of 360's that have had to be repaired/replaced, and the total number of people who've had to repeatedly.
i bought the game friday for my 360, after playin for 4 hrs
the game froze, i reset then it froze at the syart up screen, so i restarted again, screen went black and i got the 3 red lights of death, i called x-box they want me to send it in with 150 bucks of my money cuse its not under warranty anymore, after spending $90 on the game, i tryed to get ahold of red octane with no avail. this shit is gettin serious i now have a $400 paperweight sittin on my floor,
there has to be someone we can call since x-box denies the problem altogether.