In one of the worst deals we have ever heard of it appears that Mad Catz paid $300,000 to get out of a deal with Harmonix and Red Octane to do the Xbox version of the original Guitar Hero. Mad Catz got cold feet when Konami sued the companies and that is why the original Guitar Hero only launched on Playstation 2.
This was revealed in an interview with Kotaku where Mad Catz president and CEO Darren Richardson had the following to say:
"Guitar Hero was a game that we were actually involved with early on and pulled out because of a lawsuit with Konami. We were doing the Xbox SKU and that's why there was only a Playstation 2 launch. That's why. We were in there and we pulled out as a result of (the lawsuit) and (Red Octane and Harmonix) 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. It was brilliant. I come up with these strokes of genius from time to time. That was my best."
Ouch!