Rock Band Network Store coming to PS3, Wii players out of luck

Unless someone is an actually decent artist I dont see a bad part in this for PS3 fans, instead of having to dig through dozens of pap, we can wait for the boxers to do that and filter through the best stuff.

http://hackmii.com/2009/02/why-the-wii-will-never-get-any-better/

Sometimes I feel legitimately bad for those who own Wii as their only gaming console, or got Rock Band for Wii instead of PS3/360 for whatever reason.

Not that I can think of any reason. Wii-motes needed for each instrument? No DLC space? No DLC at first, then limited when it does arrive? And now this? Yeah, far as I'm concerned Those with Wii Rock Band are SOL.

yeah because GH has a guitar you can calibrate by just pointing it at your TV...... OH WAIT!

Because I can make my own setlist in tour mode?

Oh wait.

because i have a choice of over 1000+ songs to download.

oh wait...

RB instruments are still shit. I don't care about a camera that calibrates a piece of shit guitar controller that still sucks. It may look slightly more realistic, but GH doesn't try to distract you from the fact that its a game, and GH controls feel more natural. Star power on the drums can be activated at will, and it supports double bass pedal. Where is RB on that?

"If there is SDHC support in RB3, you can guarantee it will be because of GH 5."

More like "you can guarantee it will be because it's possible now and wasn't possible before." Whether or not it happens will have nothing to do with GH5.

It was always possible, they just didn't feel like doing it without Nintendo's go-ahead. What's possible in Wii games does not reflect at all the status of Wii's Firmware, since the firmware strictly applies to the Wii Menu only, and has no impact on the games themselves.

I know it was always possible, I didn't say it wasn't. But has anyone else done it? No. Has Harmonix done it? No. Is Vicarious stepping up to the plate? Yes. Would Harmonix have done it if VV didn't do it first? No. You know HMX thinks the Wii is the bastard stepchild of this generation of consoles. At least VV is putting in exclusive modes, treating the Wii like a big kid, and doing stuff others are too lazy to do.

"It was always possible, they just didn't feel like doing it without Nintendo's go-ahead. What's possible in Wii games does not reflect at all the status of Wii's Firmware, since the firmware strictly applies to the Wii Menu only, and has no impact on the games themselves."

This is about the least informed comment I've read all day. Nintendo specifically *announced* SDHC firmware support. Like an operating system, how would a program access a storage device if the operating system didn't support it?

"This is about the least informed comment I've read all day. Nintendo specifically *announced* SDHC firmware support. Like an operating system, how would a program access a storage device if the operating system didn't support it?"

Because you don't understand how the Wii works, and that the Wii doesn't actually have an "operating system".

There is a layer of common system code, but storage support is not built into that system code. The "operating system" paradigm is that the system boots into one piece of software, the operating system, and the operating system can then open a program for the user while the OS still stays resident in memory. This doesn't happen on the Wii. The Wii boots to the system menu, and when you select to play a game off the disc, the system menu software does some simple verification(to make sure you're booting off a real Wii game disc), and then exits entirely to transfer full control to the game itself.

Even the stuff that looks common, like the home screen you get when you hit the home button, isn't actually running from any sort of common asset. Instead, the code to generate that screen is manually put into every game. If you go to the home screen and choose to go back to the system menu, the game gives up control over the system and starts the system menu software again, but the instance of the menu you return to is not the same instance of the menu you booted the game from.

Since the small bit of common system code there is doesn't handle the SD card interactions, that means each game was wholly responsible for its own interactions with the SD card. Any developer could have inserted working SDHC drivers at any point prior to Nintendo doing it for their menu software. In fact, homebrew applications had been using SDHC for some time before Nintendo patched the support into their menu application.

Nintendo's system menu software is just another program, and not the "operating system" style software like the dashboards on the 360 and PS3. Nintendo's announcement of SDHC support was for their menu software.

Perhaps I should have phrased that differently. I know it was technically always possible, but to have a game support SDHC without the Wii firmware supporting SDHC wouldn't make a lot of sense. And I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Nintendo wouldn't allow it.

(Yes, Seishino, it was actually technically possible for Wii software to support SDHC before the firmware update. There were a few homebrew applications that did this before Nintendo. If I remember correctly, the Wii has no operating system, just firmware, so the same rules don't apply.)

That said, just because GH5 is the first music game that supports SDHC since the Wii SDHC firmware update doesn't mean that if any other company does it it's going to be "because VV did it so I guess we gotta do it too." SDHC support is simply a good thing to include in a game and you don't need anyone else to do it first to know that.

As time goes by and XNA increases in popularity this kind of situation will only increase.

I'm wondering if this is maybe a temporary solution. XNA is based off Microsoft's Visual Studio which is easy to extend and add custom tooling into. I also wonder if there might be any licensing and distribution advantages as MS has built XNA to get indie games distributed to the 360.

This could all come to the PS3 but it might just take more time and resources to build.

It took a while for SCE to come out with PlayStation Network in response to Xbox Live, but now, it's on par with it. I wouldn't be surprised if SCE starts responding to XNA eventually.

popularity of XNA?!?!

HAHAHAHA... oh man, good joke.

Totally agree. It makes me think some sweet Microsoft money was involved.

Xbox 360 already has the tools in place that makes this sort of thing possible. The XNA Game Creators Club has a system for content creation, peer review, and publishing. Applying this system to Rock Band tracks is merely extraordinary, rather than nigh-impossible on the PS3. Getting the "Greatest Hits" on the PS3 doesn't seem so bad in this light.

It remains to be seen if 360 users will be overburdened with shitty songs, or if PS3 users will be deprived of good tracks. That depends on the community for this.

Okay, its one thing to complain about the timed exclusivity for RB2 or even the whole All You Need is Love thing on The Beatles Rock Band, but to say that the Rock Band Network is just them getting into bed with Microsoft is pretty dumb and I'm sure you know it. XNA is what's making this thing happen; if Sony or even Nintendo implemented such a way to upload community content I'm sure HMX would jump right in.

And unless this Rock Band Network gets to the point where 100 songs are uploaded a week, I'm fairly confident that Harmonix will be churning out most of the RBN songs onto PS3, if not all of them. I doubt its in no way going to be a small "greatest hits" thing.

That was probably Acti's call not NS. The publisher makes a lot of those decisions.