Rock Band dev asks for Wii hard drive for downloadable content April 9, 2008
Harmonix’s Rob Kay, the lead designer of Rock Band (Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3,Nintendo Wii), has come out and said that they want Nintendo to release a hard drive so they can provide downloadable content for the Wii version of the game.
Kay pointed out that “if the platform could do it, we’d jump on it.” He added that they’ve been championing this issue to Nintendo and that the lack of a hard drive is “the reason there’s no DLC in Wii Rock Band.”
A previous statement from Nintendo of America made clear that it feels that that there is no need for a Wii hard drive. Well, certain developers certainly don’t think so, and we’re pretty sure that those who plan on picking up Rock Band for the Wii will probably agree. What do you think?
Order Rock Band at our online store for 169.99$ÂÂ
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HELLL YEA WE NEED A HARD DRIVE WE NEED A HARD DRIVE!
I call shenanigans.
How big could a song+pattern be?
How cheap are SD cards?
How many of these songs+patterns could you fit on a few hundred MBs let alone GBs?
Lame stalling. They were just too lazy to implement the system because it wasn’t spoon fed to them like on the Xbox 360.
What about animations and separate difficulty patterns for each song? Though, I think a hard drive for the wii would be nice.
Just allow external hard drives through USB. There’s no way that I’d buy a whole new hard drive just for my Wii.
I mean, I understand Nintendo’s viewpoint: they wanna keep it simple. Why confuse people by releasing a WiiHD that people may think is required to play a certain game or something.
But at the same time…c’mon! it would be very easy to just allow us to plug our own external hd into the back for extra space and that would allow all these developers to do exactly what they want.
Personally, I have no real desire to but Rock Band if there is no DLC. I’m not much of a “Party Gamer” and the only reason I would get it is to be able to play songs from the awesome list of downloadable songs they have.
This Is so stupid. I’m not going to Play 169 dollars for a Wii version Of a game if there are no DLC. Plus this little argument could make Harmonix’s Stop Putting games on the Wii because of the hassel
What nintendo needs to do is have harmonix’s make a brand new exclusive game for the Wii. Have them Bring back Daigasso! Band brothers and guitar hero-fy it.
Have the game with only songs from nintendo. Have the guitars and Drums (leave out the mic) Put 100+ nintendo game songs from all over the nintendo universe.
Yes Wii Music might be good. But to have Guitar hero Mixed with nintendo would be 1000x better In my mind.
Look at acouple examples of what Guitar hero with nintendo would look like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f5XqxA8Mp4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCLhlJIYTnE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME4hX7bOh6I
Even the songs that don’t have a guitar or drums in them.The song could be Made into a guitar beat Or Keep the same. EITHER WAY the game would rule.
WHY HAVEN’T YOU THOUGH OF THIS NINTENDO
A roughly three minute song assuming it’s mp3 wouldn’t be that long. But there would be multiple parts for bass, drums and guitar.
They won’t budge.. I’m sure of that. They’re obviously doing it for a reason.
I’m not even cosidering buying rock band, here in europe the price is +/- 240 euro’s thats a whooping 350 dollar for the whole pac…
Sorry for that kinda monney i’ll buy another Wii/MK:Wii pack and have a VS mach on my network…
They can use the SD card don’t they it can stream MP3’s so i tink it can be used to store DLC and transport that to the main memmory of the console…
I think the Wii has more than enough room to play games if you buy mutch Wii ware and VC games you are full verry fast but for the lot of the Wii users the 512 MB intern is no problem…
I would like a HD though
but that maks the Wii more vunable to hacking and Pirates…
How’s about this, Rock Band team: stop scamming your customers. Put all the songs in the original and complete release of the game and be done with it.
Or if you must continue this scam, let me introduce you to a little thing called an SD card.
Firstly, the songs in rock band are likely NOT mp3. They are likely WAV or very high quality format. Especially since the games support high quality audio and surround at least on the playstation so this info would need to be included as well. A 3 song pack is supposed to be around 100mb i read somewhere, so if you d/l a lot of tracks it won’t last long.
This is not to mention that fact that many people’s wii hds are probably already full. Mine is about 98% full from virtual console games. Whenever I get anything new I have to delete something else right away. It’s safe to say I won’t be investing any more money in VC or WiiWare without a new hard drive as I don’t want to delete things I paid for from my system.
Nintendos greatest flaw with the wii was probably the lack of a real hd. Even a small 10 or 20 gb hd would have sufficed. How much do these cost to buy in stores? like $15 us?!? Seriously. Perhap their mini version would run like $30 or $40 but I would have gladly paid $300 for my wii rather than $250 if it came with a hard drive, even a small one.
If they do make an external hd many will be quick to adopt it, and it will be really great because I can d/l wiiware when it comes out, and then games like guitarhero and rockband may offer downloadable content (too late for rock band).
I love the wii, but a great benefit of ps3 (dunno about 360) over the wii is that with the HD you can download patches for games. This fixes bugs, adds content, and much more. For example, activision wouldn’t have had to make new guitar hero discs because they could have easily offered a patch. Or if there was a wii hd built in and DLC wasnt there they could easily add it. But I think it is too late now.
It’s really insane that nintendo ever planned to offer a console marketing so much on downloading games like virtual console and wiiware knowing full well that the wii does not have enough space for these games and that the sd card is virtually useless.
Also the Rock Band downloadable stuff isnt a SCAM. They have a large number of songs in the game and they are working constantly to make more that they are offering for you to buy if you WANT. It’s not like these were ready since the original game release. And I highly doubt they can fit on a standard dvd… or even a dual layer (please no more read errors). Even if they could would you rather rock band never comes out or releases a new edition update every few months in stores with all the latest tracks???? The whole point is that this is post production additional content, and you arnt supposed to buy every song - just the ones you like, if you dont like any you dont buy any. How is that a SCAM? I do agree that the SD card could be possible, however, a hard drive would have been better (To begin with)
^Well put and thought out. I agree whole heartedly.
Do I think the Wii should offer up a hard-drive peripheral? YES.
Do I think that not having a hard-drive is the real reason Harmonix isn’t offering us any on-line content? NO…
Harmonix is a half-arsed development studio that just wants a cheap lazy piece of crap port to throw onto the Wii to squeeze a few extra bucks out of their game… the fact that they aren’t dropping the price even 10 or 20 bucks is more then enough evidence for me. I sincerely hope we all stay away from buying this game and refuse to reward their pathetic attempt. This is like a slap in the face, basically telling all the Wii owners that they think we are nothing more than pop-culture retards with deep pockets.
Please do not buy this game. If you receive it as a gift, please return it to the store! As loyal Nintendo Wii owners and fans, we need to buy the good games to reward those developers and give them confidence that they can make a profit releasing original titles (i.e. No More Heroes, Zack & Wiki), and boycott the bad games so that the greedy short-cut taking developers realize that we won’t accept anything but their best.
100 mb for 3 songs ??
an 2gb sd card is about $20 in Chile ,i don’t think there’s a need for an external hard drive, just use the sd cards!!
i rather have guitar hero 3 guitar compatibility than an external hard drive and over pay for a song pack.. think about ddr, it’s cheaper to buy another version of the game than buying the whole contenet.. song by song
just think about it.. 5 or 10 dolars for a song pack ? what about $30 dollars for a rock band 2 disc full of new songs !!
[...] Either way, hopefully Harmonix (Rock Band creator) will learn something from this. [...]
why the hell do i have to buy an entire disc for the three songs that i like on it
wii suck