EA Acknowledges Rock Band Guitar Problems

EA has confirmed that some Rock Band guitar controllers have issues with their strum bars, leaving aspiring rockers singing (or drumming) the blues.

Although Rock Band has only been available a week, Electronic Arts has already acknowledged an issue with the strum bars on some of the game’s bundled guitar controllers—and stands behind its warranty, including replacing defective guitar controllers at no charge.

According to EA, strum bars in an “early production run” of the Rock Band guitar controller may have an “imperfection”—user reports usually cite the controller missing downstrokes, or registering downstrokes too aggressively. The company claims to have identified and fixed the issue in subsequent production runs, but urges impacted customers to get a replacement through the EA support site.

In the meantime, eager Rock Band performers are still hoping for a patch that will enable them to use Guitar Hero guitar controllers with the band-in-a-box play-along game.

[And, hey, just think: for the price of Rock Band, players could have bought a decent real starter guitar. But we suppose play-pretend is always better than the real thing.]