Harmonix has stated that they really don’t want to break compatibility with existing DLC. Rock Band 2, with a new setlist, online world tour, and new versions of the current instrument (think Gibson SG to Les Paul) would do well.
It’s not even out here, so a sequel is a bit too early. And fucking Guitar Hero getting more than guitars? That’s stupid.
Perhaps if Rock Band became cheaper (400 dollars is the price of pre-orders here), RB2 would be welcome.
Looks like you could do everything you ever wanted by simply releasing DLC, anyway. Think beyond new tunes.
(If there’s a Hawkwind or Electric Hellfire Club pack, I’m all over it at any price!)
As mentioned above, anything that brings Rock Band 1 down to a more reasonable price point is wholeheartedly welcomed by me.
No, we need Rock Band 1 this year. Come on, get it out in Europe already!
55 songs for $60? Hell yeah, bring on Rock Band 2 as soon as possible. Not to mention the inevitable new features and annoyance-fixes it’ll include.
I get more annoyed every week that goes by without HMX releasing a Rock Band patch. What’s the goddamn holdup?
You seem to be holding Rock Band to a much higher standard than other games for some reason. While not unprecedented, it’s hardly a normal thing for a console game to even get patched with something as big as what they already did in adding the music store. Why the unrealistic expectations?
Because of all the yapping they did about it being a “platform.” We’ve given them dozens of ideas on improvements, Activison read their forums and is adding many of them to GH4! HMX needs to do something to improve the platform so they can claim they’ve already got all the features of GH4 before it comes out.
Outside by Tribe is incredible. Of course, I’d never heard of the band so I did research. I had no idea that three of its members work for Harmonix in various ways. I also didn’t know that the keyboardist/backup vocalist did the voice of Shodan.
Sadly, the albums with Outside on it is VERY expensive, but there is a fan site for the band that has Outside (and a lot of other songs) on mp3. tribeonline.info or something like that.
I think that by “platform” they were including sequels into the equation, not just saying they were going to continue patching one game until the end of eternity. I think they meant the platform they’ll establish by selling DLC and their fake instruments. Now, hopefully when they release Rock Band 2, we’ll be able to use the same DLC and instruments with Rock Band 2, and get a better game.
I was just reading their post-mortem in Gamasutra today for Rock Band, and I’m pretty amazed that they managed to pull this off. They certainly make it sound like they were on the edge the whole time, crunching the entire period, trying to get Rock Band done. They staffed up from a small company to a pretty big company during that time, had to move their offices to a different location due to lack of space at the old one, and still didn’t feel like they hired fast enough because of their mentality of trying to remain a small tightly-knit group. It’s an interesting read, and after finishing it, I’m pretty convinced that all the changes you’re looking for, are being worked on. Except they’re being worked on for a sequel.
They (Ryan & Rob(?) from Harmonix) talked about the strange company culture during their keynote
at Nordic Game 2008. Most employees are members of a band when they start, or form one while employed.
(Freezepop is also a Harmonix band)
I’m of a mind that a Rock Band 2 would be a good idea this fall. I would assume it would maintain compatibility with all previous hardware and DLC, but would simply add in all the features we’ve been asking for plus new songs.
I think it would work better as a “sequel” since doing so will provide retail visibility for the franchise - a tangible product on the shelves to directly compete with GH4. There would be a lot less media coverage if the existing Rock Band simply had incremental upgrades through patches. Also, the inevitable PS2 version would not really be able to use these upgrades - right there you have a large market of gamers who would need the upgrades wrapped up onto a standalone sequel disc.
This is all assuming my must-have feature - greatly expanded, user-mappable samples for drum fill sections (which happen to be backwards compatible to existing DLC) - is part of this RB2.
You know, a lot of people seem to agree that they would be okay with buying Rock Band 2 if it included new features and functionality, but I’m having a hard time coming up with enough significant upgrades to warrant a sequel in the first place. The one thing that I wanted most - online Band World Tour - would certainly sell the game to me, but it’s not really anything Harmonix couldn’t patch in. I’m not suggesting that that’s the course they ought to take (I can’t imagine a new game won’t make more money than the constant trickle of content money they get now), but does anybody know what features are rumored to be included in this potential sequel anyway?
Also, from a purely organizational point of view, how do you keep track of the old Rock Band downloadable material in Live Marketplace and on the disc if it’s backward compatible? Just update the in-game storefront to keep things organized and let the in-Live interface grow steadily more confusing?
I wouldn’t be surprised if—assuming there’s any backward compatibility at all for DLC—Rock Band 2 DLC did not work in Rock Band 1, only the other way around. So there’s no real trick to organizing it, RB1 DLC goes under RB1 in the marketplace, and RB2 DLC goes in RB2.
I still can’t imagine how RB1 DLC will work with RB2; I believe the way the software works, it should be fairly tied to RB1. It’s all done through unique IDs; it’s the reason most collector edition or Game of the Year versions of games that come out are pretty much identical except that they install whatever it is that makes it a special version. To play online versus each other, etc., you’ve got to keep the same TitleID.
Unless MS makes backend changes to their entire DLC system, I would imagine this is going to be difficult to accomplish. But maybe I’m not right here somewhere …
Maybe they’re thinking of a way to re-assign all the DLC to Rock Band 2, so you get the RB2 disc songs, RB1 DLC, and RB2 DLC under Rock Band 2. To play the original RB songs on the disc, you’d need to insert the disc.
If that’s the case, I would imagine you’d probably have to re-download all of the songs to get them reassigned to RB2. Note: I didn’t say re-purchase, just re-download. If they can figure out how to do that … I mean, that should work just fine, I would think. They can just read to see if your profile has purchased such and such song, then enable a free download of the RB2 version of that song.
That works too, though RB songs are kind of big and many of use have limited space on the 20GB drive.
Maybe that will be Harmonix’s bargaining chip:
MS: “You want us to let users download content for RB2 that they bought on RB1 for free? Do you not understand how this works?”
HMX: “But all those files add up! Think of the new hard drives sold!”
I have to assume Harmonix is aware that not allowing people to carry over their current RB DLC would be a major cold shower to those who invested the most into the game …
As for game upgrades, I’d love to see some more strategy elements worked into the world tour mode. Band customization and the like …
Optional, of course, so people who aren’t hardcore simOCD control freaks don’t have to bother with it.