A Look At Rock Band 2's Drum Trainer, Battle of the Bands

The folks at Kotaku sat down with a copy of Rock Band 2 and took a look at some of the game's special features. The Drum Trainer will let you practice your beats, fills, and freestyle playing, while Battle of the Bands will let you compete against others using a new set list every week. Perhaps most interesting is the ability for Rock Band 2 owners, for a small fee ("less than $5"), to import songs from a Rock Band 1 disc. "There appears, as of now, no DRM tracking on anything to indicate you rightfully own the disc you want to export. So if you missed out on the Rock Band party last year and want to play the old songs, too, all you have to do is rent a copy or borrow someone else's. It doesn't seem Harmonix [is] too concerned, however, as they're happy you already paid the licensing fee and bought Rock Band 2!"

Comments

Re:Here are Harmonix's options

[MBCook]

Donate this programmer time to The Kids or whatever.

This is the problem. They already had that to a degree. Since they designed the DLC to be forward compatible, it couldn't have been that bad.

My guess (I may have read this somewhere) is it is the music licensing fees that the cost covers, not the dev time. When the licensed the tracks they were licensed for Rock Band, not Rock Band 2. So to play them in the new game, they needed to re-license them.

Really the only choices were 1 and 3. I'm REALLY glad they chose three. Harmonix is so cool. Now if I could just get the songs from GH 1 and 2 in the game (I know some are DLC, and it would be impossible since they aren't seperated or noted for the extra instruments)...