Mad Catz paid $300K to be let out of Guitar Hero peripheral contract

Darren Richardson, president and CEO of Mad Katz, had told Kotaku that the reason the original Guitar Hero game only launched on PS2 was because the firm pulled out of doing a Xbox SKU due to a lawsuit between Harmonix and Konami.

"Guitar Hero was a game that we were actually involved with early on and pulled out because of a lawsuit with Konami," said Richardson. "We were doing the Xbox SKU and that's why there was only a Playstation 2 launch.

"We were in there and we pulled out as a result of (the lawsuit) and Red Octane and Harmonix both went forward and it turned out to be a success, a huge success.

"Everyone else made hundreds of millions and we paid money to not be a part of it."

Mad Katz paid $300K to get out of the contract.

"It was brilliant. I come up with these strokes of genius from time to time," he said. "That was my best."

Back in July 2008, Konami sued EA over patent violation related to Rock Band, claiming the game violated patents filed by the firm in 2002 and 2003 before the franchise was sold to Activision.

The suit also claimed that Harmonix, Viacom and MTV - which created and released the first Guitar Hero game - infringed upon patents created for DrumMania and GuitarFreaks from its Bemani games.

Harmonix, claimed that the controller patents were an improvement over Konami's early controllers.