GamePro - by Blake Snow, 01/02/2008:
Despite the release of a PS2 flavor and official comments suggesting otherwise, Electronic Arts has yet to confirm Rock Band for Wii.
"We have not announced any plans for a Wii version at this time," wrote EA's Bryce Baer on Wednesday in an email to GamePro.
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 expect Rock Band 2 will come out for the Wii.
If it doesn't support any motion sensing (which, judging by GH3, it won't) then it probably won't be the version to get. Worse graphics of course, and doubtless lower sound quality.
It's exclusive "for now", that's the way it always is. I mean you never know what's gonna happen in the future or how things will change.
Nintendo needs to tell other developers they can use the SD card slot since there is no external HDD ;3
I wish Activision would cave and just release the compatibility with the Les Paul already for the PS3.
I'm amazed this game isn't out for the Wii. You'd think if they released a dumbed down version for the PS2 they could do the same for the Wii.
Nintendo is coming out with Wii Music. Remember the E3 2K6 Wii video?