An interesting problem has arisen since yesterday's release of Guitar Hero 2 for the 360. Many people are reporting that their whammy bar and/or Star Power activation featured in the 360 X-Plorer guitar are malfunctioning; stating that their whammy bars are unresponsive and that it is near-impossible to activate the Star Power feature.
Equally as interstesting; it has been discovered that there are two variations of the guitar that have been included in the retail boxes shipped throughout North America (as pictured below):
Basically if the 'phone-jack' on your controller is on the bottom (next to the power cord), as compared to being placed on the back edge of the guitar (next to the headset port), then your guitar is (or soon will become) faulty. So to sum that up; if you have the guitar pictured on the bottom then you are likely experiencing problems. However if yours is on the top, you should be A-Okay.
Target currently has the guitars listed as "Recall" under their computer system, however it's yet-to-be determined if that is a computer error of if they're just the first retailer to take action.
So, which guitar do you have? And are you having problems?
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Update -- RedOctane Responds
Bryan Lam, RedOctane's Senior PR Specialist sent this e-mail to the good people at www.gwn.com in response to the rising concerns about the 360 guitar controllers:
"Hey [GWN],
The Target "recall" is NOT related to the whammy bar or a true "recall".
We've been informed this was an internal Target computer system
glitch that was only an issue during the morning yesterday from
8-10am, and the SKU was not flagged for sale. Essentially, that meant
the product still had the street date lock out. When a product is flagged
as street dated, the system rings it up as "Recall the Sale" and won't let
the retailers sell the product. It should now be selling through and
scanning just fine.
In regards to the controller, we're currently in the process of having
our internal QA and production teams look into this possible issue,
and are working to quickly isolate this if there is one. In the
meantime, we suggest our fans try to replug in their guitars without
holding down any buttons or the whammy bar, and that may help
immediately resolve the issue.
Keep rockin',
Bryan Lam
Senior PR Specialist"
