Rock Band 2 patched on 360, PS3 update going through cert

by Griffin McElroy on Sep 25th 2009 4:16PM

Ludomusicians, rejoice! The Xbox 360 version of Rock Band 2 received a massive title update earlier today, adding a whole slew of oft-requested features to Harmonix's beefy music platform. The most notable of these additions is that the game now supports wireless microphones, such as those used with Lips. Other changes include improved hammer-ons and pull-offs, background downloading for music store purchases and the "Audition Mode," which allows Rock Band Network users to test out their homebrewed Rock Band tracks.

In a Rock Band forum thread, Harmonix's Sean Baptiste explained the PS3 version of the update is currently working its way through Sony's certification process. We've yet to hear mention of a Wii version of the patch. C'mon, Harmonix! Waggle-rockers need love too!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Source

Tags: audition, harmonix, microphone, Microsoft, patch, rhythm, rock-band, rock-band-2, update, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (56)

"We've yet to hear mention of a Wii version of the patch. C'mon, Harmonix! Waggle-rockers need love too!"

Nintendo doesn't allow non-WiiWare software to be patched.

Wii owners already don't care that they can't patch in 5.1 Audio, HD, online, or enough storage to have all your songs available at once.

Why would they care about any of these lesser things?

Uh, RB2, TBRB, and all GHes have online play on the Wii. GH5 is even one step further, with support for SDHC, packs, and non-friend code online play.

Certainly, these games have come a long way from what they were on the Wii. They pushed for DLC, they pushed for online features, pack downloads (alongside song downloads) and It certainly isn't reasonable to thing that Harmonix and/or Vicarious Visions couldn't break open the patch barrier. Both GH and RB have pushed the bar on the Wii, and I wouldn't be suprised if they push it further.

That being said, Nintendo is still Nintendo, so.... yeahhh........

Unless the software on the disk was coded from the very beginning to look for a downloaded patch in wii memory or sd card, it is impossible for a wii game to be patched. The reason why is because, unlike the PS3 and Xbox360, the wii doesn't actually run an OS behind the software. Software has direct access to the hardware, vs PS360 where the software interfaces with the OS, which talks to the hardware.

In computer terms, Think of PS360 as Windows XP, and Wii as Windows 3.1/Dos 5.0. There are some advantages to the Wii way (such as all the bitchin homebrew which exists soley because coders have direct access to hardware), but it comes with disadvantages too (no patching for disc based software).

ah so thats how easy wii is now emulate on pc.

Awesome. I bought a bluetooth headset recently and it didn't work for singing. I hope the added support for the wireless microphone includes bluetooth headsets as well.

Ugh. In order for it to track your stars, you have to go through and beat all of your high scores on quickplay. Not really liking that, especially some of my highest scores will probably never be topped again, so they will remain "unplayed" in the game's eyes.

That being said, Lips Support and the fixed HOPO chords are great! Glad to have those in. This patch wasn't worth the 9 month wait, though. Kinda underwhelming.

That is bug HMX is looking into. It wasn't supposed to be like that.

Also, background downloading purchases! Finally! I can buy music on the Music Store without having to wait for every song to download! This wasn't a problem with new DLC, as you could just buy it from the dashboard at the top of the list, but if you bought stuff from the back catalog, you just couldn't find the music in the dashboard at all, so you HAD to wait. This was something that Neversoft had in the GH music store for a while, and I'm glad that RB2 finally has it. Makes purchasing from the back catalog easier.

I wish you could earn money in quick play. That is my dream feature. Hehe. Oh yeah GHWT has it! LoL.

Yeah, but couldn't they have looked into it during the 9 months that this patch took to come out?

Eh. reply to Hazy Cloud on the last post. Gah.

I have no idea. I just hope a fix is implemented somewhat soon.

This is great. Since I'm getting better and better on the drums I'll want to track all of this. I hope at some point an update adds the option to see detailed stats after a song, as that is the only area I like GH better in.

I certainly appreciate that they took improvements from The Beatles: Rock Band and retrofitted them into this update for a game that's been on the market (in the US) for a long time now. Maybe now I can do the ending to Green Grass & High Tides (Expert Guitar) with improved HOPO.

DAmnit how about a patch that makes it so it endlessly plays random songs without leaving the stage interface...its sooooooooooooo simple....make it happen already.

Or better yet how about a party mode that works like this:

Songs play without an interface when no one is playing, as soon as someone picks up and presses a button or strums, that controller becomes active and the note highway appears. The game is always in no fail mode.

At any time the user can press 'select' to change the difficulty for their instrument. If the user doesn't touch any buttons for 30 seconds, the note highway is removed and the music returns the track to playing completely.

That way you could use the game as a soundtrack for your party and people could get involved if they wanted to when they heard a song they liked or whatever.

You can do all this in Guitar Hero 5 buddy. It starts up in a "party mode" from the beginning and you can join in and play if you want, quit and the song will keep playing so you can choose another instrument and so on.

@Shagittarius:

So you want it to work just like Lips, then.

I have always wanted to be able to sort the song list by AGE, so that I can play the most recently purchased songs.

May sound dumb, but I own so many songs, some of which I buy a while before I play so that by the time I actually play the game I forget about a lot of the songs...

Meh, oh well.

Technically, all of the new songs will go under "unplayed" in the sort via stars rating.

But, you have to beat all of your high scores on the songs you have already played to get them out of the unplayed tier, so there's really no point.

Something I've been curious about lately is what their plans are for music that comes out next year.

Will there be a new category to search for music in the 10's?
Will there be a new challenge specifically for music released in the next decade?
Will it be ignored completely until the inevitable Rock Band 3?

It's quite minor and superficial to the game itself, but I'm still curious.

Once 2010 hits, the Rock Band servers explode. Its like Y2K

Ummm... What?
http://www.rockband.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3083348&postcount=5
The forum post states:
"- Ok cool, but when does it come out for the ps3?
- When it is finished [...]"
So, IT IS NOT in certification. It's not even done yet.

Sorting by stars in quick play is the one feature I've been wanting the most.

This is why I love Harmonix, and Guitar Hero can go to hell. These kinds of improvements would have been a whole new game for Activision, full priced. Harmonix supports their game, and instead patches us this type of thing for free, extending the life of their product. Love this company.

Fixing the hopo chords that should have worked in the first place.
Adding star tracking which should have been there in the first place (Rock band 1 had it)
Adding Lips Mic support which should have been added months ago.
Allowing background downloading which GH has had since World Tour.

These improvements aren't big ones at all. These were all just regular updates. This is not a "Rock Band 2.5" it's just a patch to fix up issues and add a couple of things that people wanted outside of the actual gameplay. You will see alot more gameplay improvements in RB3.

Also, I doubt you have played GH5. They couldn't patch WT with the updates that were in GH5. If they did, the patch would probably be 2-4 gigs. Besides, who wanted more GH DLC over a GH5 anyway? WT was so broken that I rarely bought DLC for that game. Hell, I ended up buying WT DLC after I got GH5, because I could finally play it in a good game.

I've played GH5 and it's fucking terrible. I'm glad they improved the character animations but it's still the same old awful note highway and UI. Rock Band is better because it's a platform and not new iterations that are independent. The Beatles is the exception but the quality of the content and progression compared to GH Aerosmith is light years beyond. Say what you will but Harmonix offers better support and has a more consumer friendly business model. Incremental changes and improvements shouldn't be a new standalone iteration. Not to mention whatever the difference is with Band Hero and World Tour.

Calm down, these are extremely minor improvements, you could barely call them new features. Compare this update to the new features in Guitar Hero 5 which are dramatic enhancements.

When they give us an update that improves the gameplay like a party play mode then you can start being a fanboy.

LOL @ "Waggle-rockers"

Down at waggle rock (dun dun)
Down at waggle rock!

Waggle your cares away,
Gamings for another day.
Let the casuals play,
Down at Waggle Rock.

Dance your cares away!

Aaaaaaaaand Snowblind killed it.

How about velocity sensitive drumming?

Dont we have that already with the RB2 drums? I thought that was one of the selling points...

Not if your in the UK/EU.. we still only have RB1 instruments!

Just read that the update adds the velocity sensitivity to the Ion drums. Finally!!!!

BACKGROUND DOWNLOADING THANK GOD!!

That's nice. Glad they're still updating this stuff.

How about removing Copy Protection saves on PS3 so i can get my save file transfered onto my new Slim??????????????

Agreed. I read the forum post about this update and the developer said that unlocking the save isn't part of this update. I got the impression it wasn't even being considered, but that's just an assumption. They need to unlock Street Fighter 4, too. Capcom did it for RE5.

doesn't feel any different.. how abut a patch to fix the calibration settings.. mine are close..

So technically...

Yet another X360 timed-exclusive!

hehehe

About time they fixed the HOPOs. They are seriously unforgiving. Reminds me of the GH2 days (when HMX still owned it).

It's only the chords that have been made more forgiving, in line with the normal single-note HOPOs. So most of what you can't hit... you still won't be able to.

I could be incorrect but I remember reading an article that stated the Wii software stack wasn't unified and as such isn't abled to have disc based games patched.

You'd be correct.

so what about the ability to skip to the next song in a set? wheres that option, it would be much appreciated

only took them a year

can anyone tell me how much the hammer ons and pull-offs are affected? i'm assuming that the patch widens the time intervals and thus makes them a little easier. is this at guitar hero III levels with the patch?

I'm really not liking the favoring MTV Games is giving Microsoft. Exclusive Beatles song? Rock Band Network? Not to mention timed exclusivity on the main games (a month in America, half a year in Europe)

Sure, this patch may be Sony's fault (and you could argue it's Sony's fault for not planning ahead with something comparable to XNA), but still, I wouldn't be surprised if they planned it like this. As a musician who loves his PS3 and the Rock Band series, this is really starting to upset/disappoint me. (I clarify I'm a musician since I'll probably have to end up buying a 360 just to use RBN.)

Anyway, what Rock Band 2 really needs is something they added to The Beatles: Rock Band. After selecting a song, when you choose the difficulty level, they remind you of the difficulty level of that particular instrument. This is really helpful so you don't have to keep going back to the menu, just because you need to check again what difficulty you can afford to pull off.

Agreed, I love that option in Beatles.

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Rock Band 2 patched on 360, PS3 update going through cert

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