This is not just another Guitar Hero post

The internets have been all aflutter today with video of Guitar Hero III in action, presumably, on the Xbox360. Joystiq made comment in their post that caught my attention:

It's hard to blame the team from Neversoft if the game's playing a little differently at the moment, as they didn't have access to the code (created by Harmonix) from the original two games.

While I know that when Activision acquired Red Octane they also received the Guitar Hero publishing rights. It seems odd that they didn't get any of the code in the process. It stuck out in my mind because it seems to mirror some of the things that go on at my own company.

Strictly speaking about only titles on Nintendo platforms, with all the developers under the wing of THQ, there appears to be little in the way with sharing of resources and ideas. Throughout the test cycle, some developers will continue to struggle with functionality that our other developers code with ease. Instead of communicating with each other, there seems to be more interaction with support at Nintendo. It seems like a case of one hand never talking to any of the other hands. We seem to have a system in place that should help with this but that our developers are still trying to figure out how to use it. Hopefully in the future, as they become better acquainted with helping each other, the test cycle will go smoother and the end product will be of a higher and consistent quality.