Dear Consumers,

Would you guys pretty please purchase the Guitar Hero World Tour bundle before the end of the year? Our sales really haven’t been what we’d like, and the economy is bad, and we’re probably laying off some of my friends and I can’t take it anymore! I’ll give you 5 free downloadable songs if you buy before December 31 - would that help?

Sincerely,

Bobby Kotick
CEO Activision

Joystiq posted a couple of stories that, together, make you laugh. Retailers to music game makers: We’re out of room, and then their reply: Music game makers to retailers: Tough noogies

It seems stores are running out of shelf space with the production of all these huge boxes of guitars, drums etc., but lucky for consumers, game makers have good reason to keep on going. Click the links to read these interesting tidbits.

Well, the word is an album is a’comin!  Remember when RockGamer’s Smeeguel made himself a celebrity on National TV?  Well, apparently, that event sparked more than just a few minutes of fame for a code monkey.  I wonder if this is what we are expecting next week.. hmmmmm

The official Rock Band forums were Rick Rolled this morning.  Visitors to the site were treated to NSFW images from rotten.com and with Rick Astley music playing in the background.

The site was first attacked around 7:15 AM EST and was cleaned up roughly around 10:00 AM EST. Since we were sleeping in this morning, we found out about this on one of our favorite overseas sites: Consolehero.com. Thank you Tyler for letting us wake up without an alarm today

According to HMXJohnlok:

Hey folks. I am deeply sorry for the prolonged exposure to this morning’s attack. Our first report came in at 7:17AM EST this morning, which, of course, we weren’t able to respond to (until roughly 10AM EST) since we don’t have round the clock Harmonix coverage.

We have disabled HTML (indefinitely) in all forums+subforums, which should prevent any future attacks from getting so quickly out of hand. Thanks to those who reported the threads, and I would like to apologize again for the prolonged exposure some of you experienced earlier this morning.

Recently posted today over at tvshowsondvd.com, is a preliminary article regarding the upcoming Season 11 DVD set of South Park. It’s a very short article, but here’s the meat of it, direct from the retailer info sent out by Paramount:

For the first time ever on DVD, every episode is UNCENSORED! While supplies last, every DVD will include a 3-song download pack for the MTV Games sensation ROCK BAND!

South Park fans will remember Season 11 being one of the best, specifically for having the episode “Guitar Queer-O”, (among other great episodes) featured above on the preliminary cover shot, highlighting Stan & Kyle’s affinity for trying to score 1 million points! The DVD set street dates on August 12th, and we’ll keep up to date with more info on the 3 tracks when it becomes available.

Reports are coming in around the country that ‘Operation Mo-Money’, a joint operation from Gibson, FBI, and the RIAA has begun.   Best Buy and Circuit City retail stores around the country are reporting that raids are randomly occurring, with armed men storming the stores and confiscating any guitars.   FBI SWAT teams, reportedly wielding plastic guns, rushed each store while representatives from Gibson and the RIAA oversaw the operation.  All Gibson guitars were confiscated, whether they were real, video game related, Activision branded or not.  “Better to be safe than sorry”.

Gibson representative Barney Sleats stated “We take our intellectual property very seriously.   It’s very clear in our patent that anything that looks like a guitar that isn’t a guitar is ours.  So selling fake guitars without giving us mo-money is bad.”   Several of the raids have produced incidents, including wedgies, noogies, and one of the representatives from Gibson got kicked in the nuts.  Hard.  He fell down.

One bystander commented, “They don’t even have real guns.  They’re plastic.  How would they feel if Remington busted into their house and took their toys away.”

One of the RIAA reps was asked what their role in ‘Operation Mo-Money’ was, they simply stated ‘We heard there was a lawsuit, so we are here’.

Gibson has finally gone too far.  If you are reading this article, it is very likely you are about to be sued by guitar maker Gibson.  No, seriously.  Here’s who they’re suing so far:

Activision (threatened to sue for patent infringement, still mysteriously not being sued officially)
Gamestop, Target, WalMart, Amazon and more Various Retailers (maybe this suit will have merit)
EA (huh? they don’t have anything to do with Guitar Hero??)
MTV (wait, how about we sue MTV!)
Viacom (energizer bunny stationed at the courthouse)
Harmonix (F**K it, we’re suing everyone else -let’s go for the Gold!)

What’s going on here? Well, apparently Activision/RedOctane’s longtime guitar making partner Gibson has decided that its not fair that Gibson isn’t making more money now that Guitar Hero has been such a success (Waaaah!). Gibson has been licensing its guitars for use as controllers since the original 2005 release of Guitar Hero and now claims that the GH series infringes upon one of its 1999 patents and is asking for all game sales to be halted. Why now?? Well it might have something to do with the fact that Activision has decided it was no longer interested in renewing its “marketing and support agreement with Gibson”.

Activision responded to Gibson’s January request to “relicense” in March by asking a court to invalidate Gibson’s patent (uh, hey its been like 3 years that we’ve been doing this and you’re just noticing this now??) So, preparing for battle, Gibson decides to make loud noises and sue all the major retailers selling the game. Come on, who sues Toys R Us? Evil people, I say.

Hey, and while they’re at it, Rock Band seems to be making money too.. let’s go ahead and sue Harmonix, because they used to be involved in Guitar Hero right? Wait - Rock Band is using Fender Guitar controllers… details, details - that shouldn’t matter.  Let’s get on record saying that Rock Band is infringing us too!

So, as you can see, you’re going to need to find yourself a good intellectual property attorney, because since you are talking about, holding, strumming, playing with, whammying, star powering, hammering on, pulling off, and otherwise coveting your Xplorer and Les Paul controllers, you are OBVIOUSLY VIOLATING GIBSON’S PATENTS!

Good luck and may justice be with you in court. See you there!