It’s easy to think of Guitar Hero as a mint, a source of nearly endless money for everyone involved that’s just now starting to dry up. That’s not exactly the case.

Darren Richardson, the president and CEO of peripheral manufacturer Mad Catz, told Kotaku today that his company paid $300,000 so it could back out of the original contract due to an ongoing lawsuit with Konami.

“Guitar Hero was a game that we were actually involved with early on and pulled out because of a lawsuit with Konami,” Richardson said. “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.”

Somehow Richardson has a sense of humor about the whole thing. “Everyone else made hundreds of millions and we paid money to not be a part of it,” he said. “It was brilliant. I come up with these strokes of genius from time to time. That was my best.”

If only sarcasm could turn back time.

Source: Kotaku