Frank

@The Aquacharger
This will basically never happen and here's why. Pro guitar/Pro bass are trivial upgrades. Basically it's a new note chart for the guitar.

If you add keyboard/harmonies, that's two note charts+ keyboard audio track. Where it gets messy is In legacy songs the guitars usually play sections of keyboard charts. So you must now also remove the keyboard sections from the guitar tracks, which adds on another pair or two of note charts/audio.

At that point, the song is pretty much completely redone. Ideally you could 'upgrade' the song to v2 for .99, but none of the systems support DLC upgrading. And harmonix isn't going to release a full song for .99 to everyone.

- Frank

@Drakkenfyre
The sierra games are cute, but the ball play is a little odd.
I played a ton of (real) pinball back in school, and I enjoyed Pinball Dreams/Fantasies a lot more than the Sierra games.

Now if you want a -really- great feeling pinball game, get the Pro pinball series, also sold by GOG.

@draffauf

You can't separate rock band, the game, with the instruments.
The whole point of these instruments is to be able to pretend you are playing music by playing pseudo instruments. (or not so pseudo in RB3 pro instruments)

It's not unlike asking would DDR be considered great without a dancing pad. No, you don't NEED the pad, but it's the entire point.

@bshido

If you like drums, get the cymbals. Cymbals are so much fun.
I got bored of drums in RB2, with RB3 I'm totally in love again.

@gofish1985

I've heard of a 'I get a loud noise sometimes when playing keyboard on PS3' bug that presumably harmonix is working on. Is that what you are talking about?

@Prboi

It might depend on the group you play with.

In the RB2 days, I used to bring my rock band gear around to parties. Whenever people pick up the instrument the first thing they do is start experimenting by pushing all the buttons, or if you are the drummer, they hit the pads. So whenever someone is trying to find or start a song, the screen is jumping all over the place because people don't realize the red/green guitar/drum pads are acting as select/cancel buttons.

So finally you end up screaming, 'WOULD EVERYONE STOP HITTING THE *#&$#(@ BUTTONS'. to get order, which lasts for about oh.... one song. In RB2 only the primary instrument (aka me) does the main selects, the others just select their instrument.. Nice.

drop in/drop out is handy because if you have 4 players, and one person decides to stop playing, in rock band 2, you must quit 'the band' and the three remaining players need to resign in/select instrument/select characters. In rock band 3, the player who leaves just does 'sign out'.

Things like this aren't 'huge things' but they just streamline and get rid of annoyances that come up during party play. It's just easier for players to jump in, select songs, and jump out.

There's no reason you couldn't get RB2 first, and run with that for a while. The only major things you'll lose are the pro modes, harmonies, the new instruments, and the new DLC. And if you decide to go to RB3, you can always export RB2.

But I'd prefer it if you got RB3, to help promote the chance of a rock band 4.

- Frank

@Prboi

Let's assume you don't include the new instruments, and/or pro modes, both of which change the game completely. Even pro drums is much different.

Rock band 3 fixed many things I disliked in rock band 3. They got rid of the drummer kicking everyone out of the song because they are banging away on the pads. You can rate songs so songs you don't like don't show up in random setlists. It now saves scores for all levels, so you know which songs you passed on expert vs medium. Drop in/drop out of songs. I could go on, but this post is long enough.

They kind of munged the on-line competitive modes, but as far as a solo/party game goes, RB3 is far superior to RB2. It's not even close.

@Ghoti
It's a specialty item. It's the guitar version of the ION drum kit, basically.

- Frank

@Golds
Not something you can just pick up and play, yes.
Impossible, no.

I played limited guitar a decade ago, and I'm slowly working my way up.
I've passed every song on medium. It does get exponentially harder as it goes on. There are a handful of people posting expert pro videos of them playing the really hard songs.

- Frank

@Dewgstrom
It hasn't been stated, but the general opinion is that it won't include a midi adapter. If you had it include the (console specific) adapter, that would require 3 different SKUS and packaging. Not to mention the people who are buying the squier are hard core enough that it is quite likely they already have a midi adapter to play with a real drum/keyboard.

The reason it is so expensive is simple - it's a specialty item.
Given that it's a squier + controller + new fretboard technology, and the limited sales it is going to have, $300 is a pretty fair price. It's expensive sure, but so is say, an ION drum kit.

- Frank



- Frank