Although Rock Band was released on both the PS3 and Xbox 360 in North America in November 2007, Harmonix's music video game only arrived on European shores as a timed Xbox 360 exclusive in May this year.
Since then EA has skirted around the issue of when the PS3 version of the game would become available in Europe, only saying that additional platform would follow later in the year.
PS3 Rock Band fans will be interested to know that a retailer listing has popped up (thanks NeoGaf) suggesting that Rock Band will be released on the Wii, PS3 and PS2 this month across Europe. While EA has not yet confirmed the release dates, the listing does back up rumours from earlier in the year which suggested a September release date for the PS3 version of the game.
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 believe besides GeoW2. This is the biggest thing for the 360 this year. That`s kinda sad considering it`s like a 1 month timed exclusive and will be out for PS3 by Xmas. If MSFT could have "secured" it until after Xmas, THAT would be big.
Edit: Oops, I thought I was talking about RB2, holysh!t you guys don`t have RB1 yet?
By the time everybody in Europe can play RockBand - for about twice as much money as the US, though - RockBand 2 will be out. Take a guess which one I'm buying, if at all.
Hint: PS3 has region-free games.
So Rockband 2 will be out before the first one is even released on the PS3
I guess thats one timed exclusive which was worth the money
Rockband a big seller? I know a lot of people here in the UK with Guitar Hero but not many with Rockband. It's like £200 ($400) here, that's just to much for some people.
Still the times I have played it have always been good fun. But do you guys think it's good enough to justify that cost? Being able to take the songs from the game and put them on your mp3 player etc would be good.
Rock Band is awesome and definitely worth every cent. I have just started the game again on 'Hard' and it still frikkin rocks!