The full retail package for Wii includes the game, one guitar, a drum kit, and a microphone to get things going. The standalone guitar will be available at the game's launch, as will a game-only version in case you just want to get the guitar and the game separately. The Rock Band Fender Stratocaster guitar controllers are wireless; however, they don't use the Wii Remote to connect to the console like the Guitar Hero III Gibson guitar controllers. Instead, they have their own built-in transmitters that make the guitars one big giant controller. The microphone and drum kit are connected to the Wii via a USB connection.
Unfortunately, the Wii version of Rock Band does not have online play or downloadable content. The game is essentially a port of the PlayStation 2 version, which does not have online functionality, so coupled with Nintendo's poor track record of online support, this missing feature shouldn't come as a surprise. However, Matt Kelly, a producer at Harmonix, told Nintendo World Report that Harmonix is still pursuing DLC for the Wii version of Rock Band in some form or another. How it can happen after launch is an unknown, but at least Harmonix is still looking into it.
The Wii version of Rock Band will be available on June 22.
"The game is essentially a port of the PlayStation 2 version,"
No, it doesn't work with Guitar Hero controllers. The PS2 version does. Oh, and it's $10 more than the PS2 version.
No sell for me. And you guys know how much I eat up accessories like this.
I was super-excited to hear that RockBand was coming to Wii. Now that details are coming to light, there are three things that are absolutely killing this for me...
1) Price. I'm gonna become known as a penny-pincher if this keeps up. I just complained about Wii Fit's price, and now I have to do the same for RB. Apparently it costs two and half billion dollars, plus your first-born child...'s first week's worth of pay (once they're old enough to work).
2) No DLC*. That's half the fun, and can extend the life of the game virtually indefinitely. A friend of mine has this for the 360, and it's like Christmas every week when the new stuff is released. I don't know why Harmonix wants to say no to money.
3) No online. Yeah, um, what? Sheesh. Lazy/stupid port from the PS2, no thanks!
* ok, I guess this could change at some point... at which point I may overlook my other two points and pick this up.
Everyone who defended Nintendo going weak sauce on the specs can bite me. It has completely f*cked Wii third party support and after this long I think it's clear it's NEVER GOING TO CHANGE. The Wii can sell a bazillion consoles but it might as well be another N64 or Gamecube because once again the first party games are practically the only thing worth a damn.
If Nintendo had made a more powerful console it would have been more expensive and because of that not sold as well and it wouldn't be in first place. There was no way for Nintendo to do it.
Plus Nintendo talks about cost and then busts out $90 Wii Fit. And has the most expensive controller ever. That they sell in two seperate parts. And then there's also the classic controller so Nintendo not only made a console with expensive controllers but also made two different controller standards. Sell everyone eight controllers instead of four. Raping our wallet on controllers doesn't seem to be a problem but the console that they make a nice profit on has to have a low price? They skimped on the hardware so they could make that profit on the hardware. They could have made the console cheaper for the consumer or could have kept the same price with better hardware but they didn't because as always Nintendo has to skim that extra few bucks off everything they can. And now they're in first place but the third party support sucks.
Ian, you're 100% wrong. The Wii has proven it can handle similar DLC (Hudson's Karaoke game). The Wii has proven it can directly load data from an SD card to use during game play (Excite Truck loading MP3s, Brawl). The Wii has proven it can handle online play for similar games (Guitar Hero 3). The Wii has proven it can handle custom character creation (Miis).
But GOD it's a HUGE improvement over what we had before.
But that didn't help at all because I think it's well established that third parties will not put in extra effort if they don't feel they need to. 90% of the time they'll either put in a half-assed effort if it sells and just plain don't provide support if it doesn't. [...] But if you give third parties the excuse to be lazy ***** they will always do it.
To gain an advantage your console has to offer what the competition has plus more.
So... are you from an alternate universe where the original XBox beat out the PlayStation 2? What's it like there?
But there was plenty of incentive to go to the original XBox over the PS2. More powerful system, better online component, 4-player controls built in, cheaper royalties, PC-Portability, Hard Drive, MS has more money than the whole world, etc., etc...
