Rob Kay, design director at Harmonix and on Rock Band, has blamed the lack of storage space as the primary reason why Wii Rock Band owners will not be able to download extra songs via DLC.
TheGamer Writes "Harmonix has proven plenty of times it can make Rock Band work without instruments."
I mean, yeah, but was anyone saying otherwise? The fact is people liked the plastic instruments rather than pressing buttons on a controller. They enjoyed the simulated experience.
"Work"? No, but to be good? It's absolutely necessary. Not having the accessories is like playing a lightgun shooter with an analog stick sure it works, but one experience is completely unique and fun as hell, and other is torture trying to make do playing in a way it was never meant to be played
I think CHEAP plastic instruments is THE reason why the instrument-genre ‘died’.
People invested in buying the game AND the peripherals, so the guitar, the dj-set, the drum, whatever, and the experience was absolutely fantastic. Great fun, great music, etc.
But then the instruments would break. A button would stop working, or your hits wouldn’t register, and that kind of hardware failure would end in you not being able to play the game as intended, and thus you not getting the scores you deserve.
So, now you had a great game, but a broken instrument, and nobody is gonna buy a new plastic instrument every 3-6 months in order to keep playing the game.
A solution would have been to release better quality instruments (obviously), at a slightly higher price, so you could have kept the new games coming and the genre alive, but sadly, that didn’t happen.
Bust a Groove, Gitaroo Man and Parrapa the Rappa were such good games. Neither needed any extra peripherals
Player 2's long-form feature about kids and video games continues with a look at introducing toddlers to games for the first time.
Music rhythm games dominated the video game market in the mid-2000s. Unfortunately, the genre would fall from grace shortly after finding success.
More like faded away than failed. Failed implies it was new and didnt take off... that is not the case. Rhythm games were hugely popular but the lights dimmed and the show is over.
You would think the current situation would cause a resurgence but im actually seeing more people picking up real instruments and learning to play. My son is one who started out on GH and now he plays real guitar.
I lost interest when they stopped allowing you to use the controller to play with, just couldn't get into playing with the guitar.
Not the sole reason, but over saturation by Activision releasing 5 GH games in one year, charging full price for all of them while only Metallica and GH5 were worth it.
I dont think these games failed at all. People aren't going to keep buying games and peripherals over and over. All songs need to work on either rockband or guitar hero thru updates. Guitar hero live was actually good but rockband with all its songs and same equipment killed it.
I'm sure part of the reason they faded away, at least over the long term, was that you couldn't download them digitally.
i haven't heard the end of it from Wii users about this... they keep mentioning SD cards as an alternative, but i'm sure they don't even grasp how DLC works and they think they can have it on multiple SD cards and the game will load them with no problem. doesn't work that way
the only solution: Nintendo supported HDD. (and a less broken online system to play with)
Mother always said you get what you pay for *hehe*
"But, But, But... Hard-drives aren't innovative, unless you can make the disc move by having your feet tapping continuously. Yes thats it!"
I certainly wouldn't mind a harddrive :)
I'm inclined to agree. Allowing the use of a harddrive would increase the usability and potential for the Wii by magnitudes. It sucks for ppl who download a lot of VC games and soon WiiWare titles to have to re-download the games/apps whenever they run out of space. I know I'm probably gonna get pissed after downloading so many WiiWare titles to have to delete/re-download. It's just not an optimal solution from a usability standpoint.
Additionally, as demonstrated by this interview, 3rd-parties want the Wii to have a harddrive so they can release DLC (and software patches, which I hate but that's an entirely different discussion).
Then I bet there will be at least one massive internet petition to try and change Nintendo's mind. Heck, it's worth a try. They were considering it as an option a while back. SD cards are like GC memory cards in that you can keep gamesaves, and that is all they can do for now.