Mad Catz's developers created a prototype and hooked it up to a computer in order to capture the inputs from a variety of Xbox 360 instruments. Neville and Bell provided details on the time-intensive development of the dongle. Bell and Neville said Microsoft was "incredibly supportive" during the process, providing resources such as important documentation, old controllers for testing and connections to component suppliers. The USB adapter was part of the plan all along, and Mad Catz worked with Microsoft to develop the device. The processĭevelopment on Rock Band 4 began in the last quarter of 2014, said Mad Catz's Richard Neville, senior product development manager, and Simon Bell, technical director, in an email interview. That seems like a simple solution: Develop a small piece of hardware that can communicate wirelessly with Xbox 360 guitar controllers, and plug it into an Xbox One. "We didn't have a lot of options given the degree to which the chip set and fundamental wireless technology changed between Xbox 360 and Xbox One," Sussman explained.Īsked if this roadblock ever led Harmonix to consider abandoning the Xbox platform and supporting backward compatibility only on PlayStation, Sussman said no, adding that the studio "knew that this was a feature that needed to exist in an all-or-none capacity."Ī USB dongle was the only way forward on Xbox. Microsoft used a proprietary wireless protocol for controllers on both the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One, but the two standards are different, making it impossible to use Xbox 360 peripherals with an Xbox One and vice versa. Representatives from both companies said that they didn't want to compromise on ensuring compatibility with previous purchases of songs or instruments.ĭelivering backward compatibility for controllers would prove to be a much more complicated process on Xbox One than on PS4. Mad Catz also worked with Harmonix to build the eventual solution for Xbox instrument compatibility. Harmonix co-published Rock Band 4 with Mad Catz, and the latter company handled the development of new controllers for the game - guitar, drum set and microphone. But Xbox 360 controllers aren't compatible with an Xbox One, which presented Harmonix with a problem. PS3 instruments work seamlessly with Rock Band 4 on PlayStation 4 (as long as you still have those USB doohickeys lying around). Wireless Rock Band and Guitar Hero controllers required USB dongles on PlayStation 3, but they communicated directly with the Xbox 360 - no extra equipment necessary. "People have spent good money on their controllers and it seemed crazy to force folks who already have good working controllers to buy new ones," said Daniel Sussman, project manager on Rock Band 4 at Harmonix, in an email interview with Polygon.Īmong the challenges that Harmonix faced on the instrument front, perhaps none loomed larger than the connectivity conundrum. The studio conceived Rock Band 4 as a platform, designed to support as much of the music that players had previously purchased, and as many of the plastic instruments gathering dust in their closets, as possible. Harmonix achieved two unprecedented goals with Rock Band 4, and both required a lot of elbow grease.
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