Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero III: shortcoming for Rock Band noted

Two of the biggest rhythm sim titles released recently are still going neck-and-neck in the monthly sales race. While Harmonix and MTV Games‘ Rock Band (Xbox 360, PS3) was able to outsell Activision and Neversoft’s Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PC, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii) this holiday season, Rock Band wasn’t exactly able to cover all its bases in the long-running sales race to give it the decisive edge overall.

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Two of the biggest rhythm sim titles released recently are still going neck-and-neck in the monthly sales race. While Harmonix and MTV Games‘ Rock Band (Xbox 360, PS3) was able to outsell Activision and Neversoft’s Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PC, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii) this holiday season, Rock Band wasn’t exactly able to cover all its bases in the long-running sales race to give it the decisive edge overall.

At US$ 170 a pop, Rock Band seemed to be the sweeter deal between the two considering the entire bundle that comes with the game – drums, guitar, microphone, and the game itself. According to some figures from the NPD Group, this was evident with the first few weeks of its market sales hitting 296,000 copies sold for the Xbox 360, and 68,500 copies on the PS3, for a total of 364,500 copies combined.

However, while the initial burst of sales overwhelmed Guitar Hero III, in the long run it was the multi-platform release of the game which made it dominate once again this November; with a majority of its players rocking on their PS2 consoles with 1,469,800 copies sold.

Rock Band is looking to match Guitar Hero III‘s edge with an upcoming PS2 SKU release of its own. However, there doesn’t seem to be any sign of a Wii version for Rock Band any time soon, so Guitar Hero III will still have the clear advantage in at least one console.

Also, it was also noted that the lack of peripheral instruments sold for Rock Band seem to be affecting its overall sales. This was linked to the fact that there were a lot of initial problems with its various instruments when it was first released. While Electronic Arts has taken it into itself to service as many of the faulty instruments as they can, there’s still a backlog of customers asking for replacement controllers.

Rock Band has answered this problem by announcing its release of individual peripherals some time in early 2008, however we’ll just have to see next month if Rock Band still has a chance to keep pace with its rival rhythm sim.