Sad news for would-be purchasers of Rock Band for Wii: No downloadable songs.
Much like the PlayStation 2 version of the popular music game, what’s on the disc is what you’re stuck with. A Harmonix spokesperson confirmed the news with Game|Life today.
Harmonix did say that five bonus songs will be added to the Rock Band disc for the Wii version, but did not say which songs those would be.
Nintendo announced at Game Developers Conference that downloadable content would soon be possible on Wii. Maybe for a future version of Rock Band?
Also, Harmonix confirmed to us that the Rock Band wireless guitar on Wii is a standalone device that will not require a Wiimote to be inserted into the controller. That’s good news!
Image: Wired.com
See Also: Rock Band Finally Rocking Wii In June
Sad news for would-be purchasers of Rock Band for Wii: No downloadable songs.
Much like the PlayStation 2 version of the popular music game, what’s on the disc is what you’re stuck with. A Harmonix spokesperson confirmed the news with Game|Life today.
Harmonix did say that five bonus songs will be added to the Rock Band disc for the Wii version, but did not say which songs those would be.
Nintendo announced at Game Developers Conference that downloadable content would soon be possible on Wii. Maybe for a future version of Rock Band?
Also, Harmonix confirmed to us that the Rock Band wireless guitar on Wii is a standalone device that will not require a Wiimote to be inserted into the controller. That’s good news!
Image: Wired.com
See Also: Rock Band Finally Rocking Wii In June
Sad news for would-be purchasers of Rock Band for Wii: No downloadable songs.
Much like the PlayStation 2 version of the popular music game, what’s on the disc is what you’re stuck with. A Harmonix spokesperson confirmed the news with Game|Life today.
Harmonix did say that five bonus songs will be added to the Rock Band disc for the Wii version, but did not say which songs those would be.
Nintendo announced at Game Developers Conference that downloadable content would soon be possible on Wii. Maybe for a future version of Rock Band?
Also, Harmonix confirmed to us that the Rock Band wireless guitar on Wii is a standalone device that will not require a Wiimote to be inserted into the controller. That’s good news!
Image: Wired.com
See Also: Rock Band Finally Rocking Wii In June
Nintendo fans your wait is over, Harmonix and MTV today officially announced that Rock Band will be hitting the Wii on June. 22 for $170.
Wii Rock Band will be released as a Special Edition bundle that includes the game, drums, microphone and a wireless guitar. Stand alone instruments will also be available on June 22. The game will feature 63 songs including five bonus songs for Wii gamers to enjoy.
“The Wii’s success among casual and core gamers of all ages makes it an ideal match for the cross-generational appeal of the music featured in Rock Band,” says Bob Picunko, Vice President of Electronic Games and Interactive Products, MTV
“The social interaction and addictive nature of the Rock Band experience is a perfect fit for the Wii and will undoubtedly be fun for the entire family,” says Steve Singer, licensing VP from Nintendo.
Full release on the jump.
Wii Will Rock You!
MTV Games, Harmonix and EA Announce Rock Band™ for Wii on June 22, 2008
The number one selling game in February 2008 is coming to Wii!
Cambridge, MA - March 24, 2007– Harmonix, the leading developer of music-based games, and MTV Games, a division of MTV Networks, which is a division of Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), along with distribution partner Electronic Arts, Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS), today announced plans to release the award-winning music video game Rock Band on the Wii™ home video game system from Nintendo in the U.S. and Canada on June 22, 2008 for the suggested retail price of $169.99.
Rock Band for Wii will be released as a Special Edition bundle including the software, drums, microphone and a wireless guitar. Stand alone instruments will also be available on June 22nd for people who want to build their band one instrument at a time or want to play the drum versus drum game mode. The game will feature 63 songs including five bonus songs for Wii gamers to enjoy.
“The Wii’s success among casual and core gamers of all ages makes it an ideal match for the cross-generational appeal of the music featured in Rock Band,” says Bob Picunko, Vice President of Electronic Games and Interactive Products, MTV
“The social interaction and addictive nature of the Rock Band experience is a perfect fit for the Wii and will undoubtedly be fun for the entire family,” says Steve Singer, licensing VP from Nintendo.
Rock Band is an all-new platform for music fans and gamers to interact with music like never before. The game challenges players to put together a band and tour for fame and fortune - all while learning to master lead/bass guitar, drums and vocals. Featuring the most master recordings of any music game ever by the world’s biggest rock artists, Rock Band includes tracks that span every genre of rock ranging from alternative and classic rock to heavy metal and punk. Rock Band has garnered over 40 awards this year including Game Critics Award: Best of Show E3 2007 and three awards at The 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards including Outstanding Innovation in Gaming, Family Game of the Year, and Outstanding Achievement in Soundtrack.
Rock Band is rated “T” for Teen (lyrics, mild suggestive themes) by the ESRB.
Rock Band is currently available on the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft®, the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, and on the PLAYSTATION®2 computer entertainment system.
Nintendo fans your wait is over, Harmonix and MTV today officially announced that Rock Band will be hitting the Wii on June. 22 for $170.
Wii Rock Band will be released as a Special Edition bundle that includes the game, drums, microphone and a wireless guitar. Stand alone instruments will also be available on June 22. The game will feature 63 songs including five bonus songs for Wii gamers to enjoy.
“The Wii’s success among casual and core gamers of all ages makes it an ideal match for the cross-generational appeal of the music featured in Rock Band,” says Bob Picunko, Vice President of Electronic Games and Interactive Products, MTV
“The social interaction and addictive nature of the Rock Band experience is a perfect fit for the Wii and will undoubtedly be fun for the entire family,” says Steve Singer, licensing VP from Nintendo.
Full release on the jump.
Wii Will Rock You!
MTV Games, Harmonix and EA Announce Rock Band™ for Wii on June 22, 2008
The number one selling game in February 2008 is coming to Wii!
Cambridge, MA - March 24, 2007– Harmonix, the leading developer of music-based games, and MTV Games, a division of MTV Networks, which is a division of Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), along with distribution partner Electronic Arts, Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS), today announced plans to release the award-winning music video game Rock Band on the Wii™ home video game system from Nintendo in the U.S. and Canada on June 22, 2008 for the suggested retail price of $169.99.
Rock Band for Wii will be released as a Special Edition bundle including the software, drums, microphone and a wireless guitar. Stand alone instruments will also be available on June 22nd for people who want to build their band one instrument at a time or want to play the drum versus drum game mode. The game will feature 63 songs including five bonus songs for Wii gamers to enjoy.
“The Wii’s success among casual and core gamers of all ages makes it an ideal match for the cross-generational appeal of the music featured in Rock Band,” says Bob Picunko, Vice President of Electronic Games and Interactive Products, MTV
“The social interaction and addictive nature of the Rock Band experience is a perfect fit for the Wii and will undoubtedly be fun for the entire family,” says Steve Singer, licensing VP from Nintendo.
Rock Band is an all-new platform for music fans and gamers to interact with music like never before. The game challenges players to put together a band and tour for fame and fortune - all while learning to master lead/bass guitar, drums and vocals. Featuring the most master recordings of any music game ever by the world’s biggest rock artists, Rock Band includes tracks that span every genre of rock ranging from alternative and classic rock to heavy metal and punk. Rock Band has garnered over 40 awards this year including Game Critics Award: Best of Show E3 2007 and three awards at The 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards including Outstanding Innovation in Gaming, Family Game of the Year, and Outstanding Achievement in Soundtrack.
Rock Band is rated “T” for Teen (lyrics, mild suggestive themes) by the ESRB.
Rock Band is currently available on the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft®, the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, and on the PLAYSTATION®2 computer entertainment system.
This week’s setup belongs to VampireChrist. His game room contains an awesome custom Rock Band drum set, and a huge collection of games. I particularly like the guitar setup with the real guitar and the two videogame guitars. Check out more of his setup on his C-Blog.
As always, plenty of Community Blogs were made this past week and I’m here to highlight the best of everything from that accord. Hit the jump for best of the bunch.
I can tell you the exact moment that I decided to stop playing Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None and never come back.
But first let me say how much I appreciate the effort. The Wii’s mouselike controller and casual audience make it perfect for point-and-click adventure games, which of course is why absolutely no one has bothered to make one. No one except The Adventure Company (natch), who has ported its 2005 PC adventure game And Then There Were None, based on the best-selling novel, to Wii.
As a proof of concept, it works like a charm. Adventure games work very well on Wii. The interface transfers over perfectly, the one-handed controls mean you can eat lunch while you puzzle over the game’s brainteasers, and high-tech graphics aren’t important to the slow-paced style.
But as a game, And Then There Were None commits every cardinal sin of bad adventure design.
When I first started playing the game — how silly I feel, looking back! — I thought it was shaping up to be too easy. The re-enactment of Agatha Christie’s famous novel was speeding along at a rapid clip: Ten strangers arrive on an isolated island, and one by one their mysterious and absent host begins to murder them. By the time five people lay dead, I’d only solved a few puzzles, although I’d amassed a sizeable inventory of objects whose uses I could not even begin to guess at.
By this point, my main complaint with the game was that too much of it seemed to revolve around tramping around the island aimlessly, having absolutely no direction as to what to do, and finding nothing. Eventually, I’d pass some arbitrary waypoint and the game would load up the next cut-scene, somebody else would die, and the game would continue on with me having done very little.
And then, about halfway through, I hit The Wall. My character decided that now was the time to put his “plan” into action, a plan that he had not shared with me, for getting off the island. Great! Only except I had pretty much clicked on everything by this point and didn’t know what to do. Applying a little more brain power, I discovered the secret entrance to a hidden room. But was still totally stuck.
Before I tell you what happened next, you have to understand that the game’s shelf life was rapidly deteriorating. And Then There Were None is not a good-looking game by anyone’s measure; the characters and environments were pug-ugly in 2005 and the journey to Wii did them no favors. The writing is mediocre, the voice acting barely passable, and the music is one repeating piano piece that would drive one to suicide if there were not already a murderer on the loose.
I had been quite forgiving of all of this because, well, it’s based on a great murder story that I haven’t read. By this point (about four or five hours in), I was getting absorbed into the murder mystery and wanted to know what happened next.
So bearing all this in mind, I hope you understand why I went to the Internet for help. Loading up a FAQ for the game, I was immediately confronted not with a head-slappingly obvious solution to the puzzle, but a giant list of in-game items that I had absolutely no idea existed.
The pipe stem is in the ladies’ bathroom? I marveled. I went in that bathroom like ten times and looked everywhere! But there it was: A miniature gathering of pixels that for all the world looked like a slight discoloration in the sink tile, something that I never in a million years would have clicked on.
More revelations from the FAQ: Belied by the serious, realistic ambience, the latter half of the game hinges on the sort of completely ludicrous, use-the-turkey-baster-with-the-flour1 type of puzzles that no one ever solves unless they a) cheat b) try to combine every object with every other object in a desperate bid to make progress.
Yes, I could have brute-forced my way through some of the puzzles using just that technique given enough time, but some of them were profoundly absurd in their opacity. Had I really been enraptured with the story and presentation, I might have just looked up the puzzle I was stuck on and proceeded from there, but by that point I had lost all ability to care, and shut the game off forever.
I’d like to encourage The Adventure Company to bring more point-and-clicks to Wii, but please, please make them better than this.
1I am not making this up.
–Chris Kohler
WIRED The first attempt at a genre perfect for Wii
TIRED Terrible puzzle design that eventually causes you to stop apologizing for the bad graphics
Rating: 
Read Game|Life’s game ratings guide.
Images courtesy The Adventure Company
Yeah, broken. Shame. Seems anyone who owns the PS3 version of the game and wants to play online is shit outta luck, with widespread reports flooding into our poor, beleaguered tips box all weekend of problems associated with the game’s multiplayer. Chief amongst these is just finding someone to play against, with most users complaining of an inability to connect to servers for a game, though those who can connect aren’t out of the woods, with a number of glitches and bugs during online play reported. All in all a big fat mess, really. Ubisoft are aware of the problems, and are asking anyone affected to hit up the game’s forums and complain officially and in detail, as “this information will be invaluable in working out and addressing the issues you are experiencing”.
Issues [Rainbow Six Boards]
And there’s more! And it *might* be real, too!! Earlier, we brought word of Sonic Unleashed screenshots that were unleashed off of SEGA’s FTP server. Then this alleged Sonic Unleashed clip hit the internet. Now? This character art and more concept art work. We highly approve of this still-rumored-but-unconfirmed art. Apparently, SONIC TEAM as well as developers in the States and Europe are working on this title together. If this is their work, we appreciate them making Sonic not-sucky again. If it’s some random internet fakers, we likewise appreciate them making Sonic not-sucky again.
Sonic Unleashed Update [Sega Magazin]
T3CH released a new SVN compile (rev12263) of XBMC for Xbox (XboxMediaCenter(info)).
This T3CH-compile is a complete snapshot of what is in SVN at the time the build was compiled, with just a few small additions.
Special Notes and Noteworthy/XML/Script changes:
* XBMC Lyrics updated to 1.5.7. AMT updated to 0.99.3
For the full changelog (all added/fixed/changed/updated stuff) since the 2008-03-09 SVN Rev11970 build click here.
Keep in mind this is a SVN snapshot of the current development tree. It’s not an official (stable) point release. Use only if you know what you are doing.
Official XBMC Site: http://xbmc.org (manual and FAQ)
Official T3CH Site: http://t3ch.yi.se (release RSS feed)
Download Binaries: n/a (built with XDK) | Download SourceCode: here