Guitar Hero World Tour has been going through plenty of issues of it’s own, just like LittleBigPlanet and issues that its rival, Rock Band, had also gone through when it launched last year.
These include reports with the music peripherals including malfunctioning microphones, faulty guitar strum bars and drum sensitivity issues. The latter though has been a much bigger problem than anything else (the drums in Guitar Hero World Tour are pressure sensitive allowing players to achieve different volumes by hitting the drum pads harder or softer), and thus Activision has pledged to address the drum sensitivity issue via a “tuning kit” that they will be sending out to people who need them. This will allow players to adjust the sensitivity of the drums manually, and it’s been described as a USB MIDI device.
Specifically people were mostly reporting problems with the red snare drum pad and the yellow symbol on the Rock Band World Tour Drum Kit. Both are located on the left side of the kit and gamers were reporting that they would either fail to register hits or misread hits.
This was likely due to shoddy wiring in the pads or poor quality control during the manufacturing of the pads. So before Activision addressed the problem, people had been doing their own fixes, including cardboard rigging, masking tape fixes and even re-soldering wiring. Which isn’t recommended, as it violates your warranty, and now Activision is addressing the issue as mentioned above.
Activision also said that these issues seem to be an “isolated incident” and had this to say to GameSpot:
“We have learned that certain drum controllers manufactured for Guitar Hero World Tour have sensitivity issues,” reads the statement. “We believe that these controllers are limited to ones in the earlier manufacturing stages. While we believe that this was an isolated manufacturing issue, we are stepping our efforts to randomly test our drum controllers so customers can be assured they work properly. In the event any consumers do experience problems with their drum controllers associated with sensitivity issues, we are offering a drum tuning kit that will enable players to fully optimize their drums.”
“Our goal would be to immediately address any hardware issues Guitar Hero World Tour players have with the game. Consumers should visit the Activision Publishing customer support Web site at www.activision.com/ support website or call 310-255-2050 in the U.S. where a customer care representative will assist them. Activision is fully committed to the highest quality manufacturing standards, and to satisfying every Guitar Hero World Tour fan so they can enjoy the best musical gaming experience ever created.”
Hopefully this will be resolved soon so people can get back to rocking out.