Rock Band Bundle Only Option Available This Year

Via 1up, an interview at the site bits bytes pixels and sprites with the folks at Harmonix clarifies a great deal about Rock Band . The co-op multiplayer rhythm game is due out before the end of the year, and at least in 2007 the only way to get it will be the $169 bundle pack. There's also some information on the game's downloadable content, which sounds like it will be considerable: "Harmonix is committed to providing gamers with a wide selection of new content and promises that one week from launch The Who's famous album "Who's Next" will be made available for download. Harmonix has also scheduled new content to be released every week until the end of 2007 to keep the game fresh throughout the holiday season."

Comments

I've heard this before

[WndrBr3d]

The biggest problem I have with Harmonix and their PR with downloadable content is they really burned XBox360 users with GH2. Their PR campaign before the games release was that GH2 for the 360 would have "more online content than anyone has ever seen in a game..." (link to interview). This gave people who had already spent $100+ on GH2 for the PS2 (Game/Controller + Additional Controller) a valid reason to buy it again.

Here we are six after GH2 for the XBox360 was released. What downloadable content do we have? Four song 'packs' with songs that were already in GH1, and a song pack of indie bands few have heard of.

So, although the offer of copious amounts of downloadable content for Rock Band is tempting and easy to get excited about, it should be taken with a big, big big big grain of salt.

Konami, anyone ?

[damaki]

Now that Rock Band is bound to arrive soon, I am questioning more than ever the international marketing choices of Konami. I mean than Konami already did every rythm that Rock Band will regroup but still, did not have a clue on how to penetrate the american and european markets. Are they totally dumb?
Guitar Freaks has existed for years, and because of its japanise-ish (though nice) tracklist, they never exported it. Same goes for Drummania which definitely rocks. And how about the karaoke thingy? They had these all and discarded the foreign markets.
I guess that some Konami executives must be currently in a mass sepukku movement.
They have all these great franchises but are absolutely unable to exploit these correctly outside Japan.

Well... as long as I can buy those Bemani games, I do not really care. Long live Bemani, hail Beatmania, and all these other venerable but high quality franchises.

Re:Too much space

[jollyreaper]

I hear you on this one. It seems to me that this game just requires too much space. Unless you have an entire room dedicated to video games, it seems like something that will just end up getting shoved in a closet to get it out of the way. At which point you'll get too lazy to take it out again, and you'll stop playing. In the suburbs, I hear they even have dedicated masturbatoriums! Wow, such largess!