yes yes a thousand times yes

I guess this is just the "official" announcement, most gaming sites had the complete 83 song list up last week.

I realize that I actually don't give a flying fuck in the least and that is entirely Activision's fault.  I wonder if MTV Games could sue Activision for ruining the music games market by diluting it with too much product.  That sounds like a pretty batshit insane lawsuit but we've seen worse.

Let's put it this way.  I WANT to see that lawsuit because of its trainwreck appeal. :)

That's the problem right there! Diverse means that I won't want to play or hear most of the crap on the setlist. I never played in career mode to earn money or upgrade my character because the game would randomly select some horrible song. I don't want to play 50% of the songs. Even if I were to waste money of DLC that I liked, it still wouldn't rule out the possibility of coming across a song that shipped with the game. Harmonix needs to leave the game blank and give customers an access code with the game to download whatever 50 tracks they want. That way I don't have any of Harmonix's bad taste spoiling my game.

Because we haven't also had Lego Rock Band, The Beatles Rock Band, and (stupidly enough) Green Day Rock Band?

Has The Beatles: Rock Band even turned a profit? I know they spent a ton of money on the license (a guaranteed minimum of $10 million in royalties, with the potential to go up to $40 million based on sales), but the game has sold nowhere near as much as they expected.

I'm with Morari. That set list is way too diverse.

There are 15 tracks I want to play, and then a big pile of dung that makes up the rest.

It's worth $5 in the clearance bin, so let me know when it gets to that point. Man, and I thought GH: Warriors of Rock's setlist was medicore.

P.S. TJ Spyke, I seriously doubt Beatles has turned a profit. They paid a TON for that, and after the first month, people didn't care. I never cared in the first place. A) It's the Beatles, who I didn't grow up with. B) I heard you can get through the entire setlist in about 8 minutes.

This is one of the best set lists I've seen in a music game. This, along with the other changes and additions, make this a no-brainer day one purchase.

I'd hesitate to call any game that requires such an investment to be a 'day one no-brainer'. More to the point, I don't see what's the big hubbub about Rock Band 3's song list. Predictably, it looks just okay, like most music video game set-lists, but if we're talking ratios, then I agree, Morari - it seems 50:50 in terms of the proportion of songs I wouldn't mind playing. I understand why it's necessary for Harmonix to diversify, but inevitably this results in only around half the songs, if that, being what any one player is looking for. There are definitely some tracks that I feel have no place in a game called, you know, Rock Band.

But you have to think about the ideas of sequels.


The big number change is when new adapters and old fans come back.  You can't just have a set list that appeals to limited people...because you could rule out entire audiences that may not like heavy metal or rock music. 


Being diverse opens the game up to larger audience.  And really 50 songs that you would like to play, plus the chance of discovering a new song you like, plus the other songs just thrown in for bonus is a pretty good investment for the price. 


Is it perfect, no, but I think people are too hard on these set lists.

The diverse set list is the problem with this model.  What they should do is make every song DLC and instead of getting these 83 songs you get 83 DLC vouchers to download which songs you want.  But then not everyone has internet but I think you could still offer both this and my DLC idea.

I want to spend $50 to get 83 songs and I get to pick what songs those are.  Do that and I'm interested again.  Playing these games with my friends the career mode goes from "Yeah!" to *groan*.  These games have introduced me to some of the WORST songs I have ever heard.  But some stupid moron likes it so to please his horrible taste every game gets a big mishmash of songs.

*continues waiting*

Expecting 83 songs you like for $60 is too much. $60 would get you 30 songs of DLC, and that's forgetting about the new game modes and support for a new instrument and the manufacturing costs.

Why?  This game has 83 songs.  Whether or not the song is good or not is up to opinion.  For some this may well be 83 songs they like.

I'm talking the same game with the game modes and everything only instead of 83 pre-picked songs it lets me the customer choose which 83 songs I want.

I don't see how this affects the costs to the game itself much at all.  83 songs is 83 songs.  If they can make a profit with this game offering 83 songs what difference does it make what specific songs make up that 83?

Or are you saying that the whole business model relies on me hating half of the songs so that I'll go buy a bunch of DLC?  Like if I had the choice of the 83 songs that the odds are I would feel less of a need to buy extra songs if I could cherry pick the best 83 of them.

It would cost more to make because they'd have to make a lot more than 83 songs so people would have choices.

But they already have those choices.  There are two other whole Rock Band games plus the existing DLC.  Starting off cold with tons of songs isn't practical but at this point it is because the series is established.  This "buy the game and it comes with all these songs whether you like them or not" routine made sense at first but as these games have been released it is less necessary.  As a newcomer to the series it would be nice to just get 83 song credits to pick any 83 songs from the existing three games (plus Beatles and Green Day) to start you up.  That is how this and Guitar Hero should have worked for a long time.  Not a newcomer and you already have all the songs?  Fine.  Here is 83 new songs.  If that's no good for you you can always wait until more DLC comes out or wait until Rock Band 4.  Hell you can just use what you have and add tracks using DLC.

This whole music thing should be a platform of sorts.  There should be one game and you just pick all the songs you want.  Having these constant sequels with some minor change to the gameplay is stupid.  What people really have wanted this whole time is Rock Band 1 with the option to pick whatever songs they want.  Releasing sequels has always been the wrong way to go about this and the whole thing is like some dead fad now because of it.

This is the first real Rock Band game in 2 years, and it does big things that change up the game, more than any music game since the original Rock Band. They can't just give you DLC credits this time; that might have worked last time, but this time there's a new instrument and new difficulty levels and they understandably want the songs you get to be compatible with them.

I couldn't agree more. It's not an unlikely scenario either.

What would be ideal (but impossible unlikely) is if all of the music games were cross compatible. Maybe I like Rock Band better as an engine and platform, but Guitar Hero has a bunch of DLC that I want? It should all be compatible (while omitting some of the platform-specific mechanics, perhaps?), just like my MP3s can be played in any program I want. I can already do this with Rock Band 2, the Homebrew Channel, and RawkSD. It works great! The problem still remains however that I can't play in career mode without hearing a handful of absolutely terrible songs that shipped with the game.

Rock Band 3's set list is too diverse to fully appeal to anyone. I love almost all of the songs from the 60s and 70s, but my interest starts to slip throughout the 80s setlist. By the time the 90s and 2000s hit, I've pretty much given up. :P

The way I look at it, I'm paying $60 for "Werewolves of London" and getting 82 other songs for free.

That would be nice, but yeah it will never ever happen. It would be like wanting to be able to download Xbox Live Arcade games on a PlayStation 3.

It wasn't until RB3 that it could really become a platform.  With MIDI support and Rock Band Network, they've pretty much gotten to where everybody hoped they would get: a music system that spans all the old plastic up through real instruments.

I think you are completely taking the business side out of the equation.


Notice you get one or two songs from a band, even though many songs from that band are available.  Do you know why?  Record labels and the bands want a cut of that money, and demand it for licensing the music.


So that means if you allowed them to pick any 83 songs, licensing issues could prevent the whole deal, or if it was allowed make the game more expensive, or unprofitable.


Right now they can say look we will use 1 song from your collection in the main game and that will help sell your presence in Rock Band and help you make more money on downloads.


I am sure that Harmonix would love to give everyone their personal choice of any 83 songs but it is not economically feasible.


Instead, I think it would be wise to give the consumer 60 songs then allow them vouchers to download any 10 to 15 songs of your choice.  The idea would be to help promote the download store and downloading feature of the series...and you can even put a stipulation only 1 song from a band perhaps.

Not everyone has access to high-speed Internet access.  The Adoption rate is currently at about 65% of US homes have some form of broadband access.  Only about 75% of PS3/360 systems and 50% of Wii systems are online.  If the game ships with zero songs on the disc they're cutting out a significant portion of their potential market.

If a large enough percentage of Rock Band customers regularly downloaded songs, I'm sure Harmonix would consider what Ian is suggesting.  However, since they're not, my assumption is that threshold has not yet been met.

I can't say this list excites me any more or less than the Warriors of Rock list.  I still like to play these games, but I'm burned out on buying them.

72.9% of US homes are estimated to have broadband as of December 2009, and is probably even higher. That seems high enough.

I think the real problem is where to store the songs. Wouldn't all of the downloaded songs go on a storage device rather than the disc itself?

If Nintendo's next system uses cartridges/cards, the songs could be stored in the game itself...

Both music games this year brought a lot of new bands to the table I like.  RB: The Smiths, The Cure, James Brown.  GH: The Cure, Bad Brains, QUEENSRYCHE!

Maybe we could just have the option to disable any songs we want? All of the EA games I've played have this option, for much the same reason I'd assume. I immediately turn off all of the rap and other crappy music. Why can't I at least do that with Rock Band if they're going to force a bunch of emo tunes through my stereo? :P