Pre-release and Development
Konami had been known for their Bemani series of music simulation games in Japan. In particular, Konami's guitar simulation game GuitarFreaks (and its obscurity outside of Asia), influenced the American video game developer Harmonix to produce their own similar game, Guitar Hero. On July 10, 2006, it was reported that Konami had filed for a trademark in the United States on the name "Guitar Revolution" on June 29, 2006. With a name patterned off Konami's own Dance Dance Revolution and Karaoke Revolution franchises, the trademark filing led to speculation that Konami was developing its own competitor to the Guitar Hero series.
Rock Revolution would be officially announced and presented by Konami at a press event in San Francisco on May 15, 2008. An early version of the game was demonstrated at the event, featuring songs by Twisted Sister, Avril Lavigne, The Ramones, and Quiet Riot, among other tracks. The Xbox 360 version was demonstrated with guitar controllers from Guitar Hero, but a newly-designed drum controller specifically designed for Rock Revolution was also demonstrated. Associate product manager Mondona Akhazan stated that Rock Revolution would be a more drum-focused game, by contrast to other band games, which developers felt were putting more focus on the role of the guitarists. As such. the Rock Revolution drum kit featured a layout containing 6 drum pads (as opposed to the four-pad layout used by Rock Band), the largest being a snare drum located directly in front of the player.
The Wii and Nintendo DS versions would not use guitar and drum controllers; instead the Wii version uses the Wii Remote and Nunchuck as air instruments, and the Nintendo DS version uses a touchscreen and internal microphone to play instruments and vocals respectively. The ability to play as a vocalist remained exclusive to the DS version, as Konami felt including this feature in console versions could potentially affect the Karaoke Revolution series.
In September 2008, Konami officially confirmed that there would be no specific guitar controller made for Rock Revolution, and that both guitar and drum peripherals utilized by the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series would be compatible with the game's Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions; drum patterns would automatically be modified based on what controller a player is using. In a June 2008 interview, Konami's associate producer Keith Matejka had felt that there should be better compatibility between the peripherals used by recent music games, believing these different controllers only provided "slightly different" experiences from each other, and that they were expensive to manufacture and purchase. Both Sony and Microsoft later announced the controllers for Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 would be interchangeable between each other and Rock Revolution.
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