SD card streaming confirmed for Rock Band 2
Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 1:34pm by Jake
With Guitar Hero World Tour’s undying promise for downloadable content it’s no surprise Rock Band 2 wants a piece of the pie. The big question to Harmonix since their announcement has been a solution to song storage. MTV Multiplayer has the info…
“Rock Band 2″ does read 100% from the SD card, but it doesn’t appear Nintendo will be allowing for games to be executed off the card just yet.
Motown asked…” I’ve always wanted to know how they’d fit all that DLC content on the Wii’s 512MB of flash memory? Would you have to add an SD card to download more than 17 songs?”
It’s unclear just how many songs would fit on a clean Wii’s system memory. That depends on what song you are downloading. The longer the song, the more memory it’s going to take up. But it’s safe to say there won’t be much space for users who are also taking advantage of Virtual Console and WiiWare. An SD card will probably be a must for “Rock Band 2″ Wii owners who want more than disc music. So, yes, you’ll likely have to have an SD card.
Sounds like streaming DLC on the Wii version of Rock Band 2 is at a halt until Nintendo releases that much needed firmware patch for SD streaming.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
““Rock Band 2″ does read 100% from the SD card”
“Sounds like DLC on the Wii version of Rock Band 2 is at a halt until Nintendo releases that much needed firmware patch for SD streaming.”
These two statements are incongruous. How can Rock Band 2 DLC be at a halt because of streaming issues, yet it can read songs directly from the SD card?
October 20th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
I agree with Poochy. They are just saying downloadable games won’t be able to load off the SD card until the firmware upgrade- but downloaded content like GHWT or RB2 tracks will work. False alarm.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
^^ Hey fellas, lets try reading the article again…
“…but it doesn’t appear Nintendo will be allowing for games to be executed off the card just yet.”
October 20th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Yes Jake- I read GAMES and EXECUTED. My reading comprehension is just fine. RB2 does not require the game to execute off the card, it would require a game to SAVE to and READ from the card. But on the other hand if you download World of Goo for instance and if you move it to the card you cannot execute it from there (until the update). These are two different things.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
I have to agree with them Jake because Smash Brothers Brawl has NO problem reading your pics and videos off the SD card directly.
Unless Rockband 2 requires some special formatting of the SD card or using up extra space for a cache or something, I don’t see why Rockband 2 will be held up from DLC (not to mention GH4 will have the ability too).
Either way, I want to see how both Wii versions stack up.
October 20th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
^ The current Wii hardware (with latest firmware) does not allow you to stream songs, games, etc directly from the SD card. You must instead manually transfer that data to the Wii internal memory, or in some cases RAM in order to properly use it. We all know this.
Harmonix is simply revealing that fact that they are utilizing the upcoming firmware upgrade (click link in article) which as Iwata revealed would allow both first, and third party developers to have direct 100% streaming access to the SD card slot. Rock Band 2 has this ability to 100% stream songs from the SD card, but as the interview clearly said…”but it doesn’t appear Nintendo will be allowing for games to be executed off the card just yet.”.
Rock Band 2 will allow you to load songs (DLC) from the SD card, but not at 100% streaming.
You see? I’m not dissing your ability to read, Apok. I’m just posting the news.
October 20th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Sorry Jake, didn’t mean to be short but I still think you are missing the point of the Multiplayer article. Let me just isolate these 2 parts:
“As for the SD card streaming, does the game read those tracks 100% from the card? If so, could this mean Nintendo is open to letting full-blown games run 100% from the card?”
““Rock Band 2″ does read 100% from the SD card, but it doesn’t appear Nintendo will be allowing for games to be executed off the card just yet.”
So what I take from that is whoever was asking the question was basically saying ‘Hey looks like you guys are able to read directly from a card- if you can do that can we load Wiiware or VC games from there?’ and Harmonix is saying ‘Yes, we are reading 100% from the card, but you can’t play FULLBLOWN games from the card yet.’ I think the use of the word fullblown is the key there as they are distinguishing what RB2 is doing and what the firmware upgrade will do.
Like Liraco said- Nintendo currently uses the SD card for levels, movies, and screen shots for SSBB – it seems to me like Harmonix is utilizing this existing functionality and not the firmware upgrade. And GHWT is doing something different altogether where it is blocking off 200 blocks on the Wii’s onboard storage and using that to shift tracks in and out from the SD card on the fly for you when you need to access them.
October 20th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
I’d still like to know when this update is coming… 2009 isn’t very specific, everything seems to be happening in the magical year of 2009 but I want specifics.
October 20th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
So…wait.
RB2 is going to have to wait until the Spring firmware update before you can play songs off the card?
And yet, when I buy GH:WT next week, I will be able to play songs off the card without the Spring firmware update?
What’s going on here?
October 20th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
“And GHWT is doing something different altogether where it is blocking off 200 blocks on the Wii’s onboard storage and using that to shift tracks in and out from the SD card on the fly for you when you need to access them.”
Please, please, PLEASE tell me you’re joking.
That sounds like it will be horrifically slow!
It took me five minutes last night to copy SBCGFAP: Episode 1 to an SD card. These songs–complete with vocals, and separate drum and guitar tracks–could be up to twice as big as some Wiiware games.
What the hell are they thinking?! Why was Harmonix able to implement card-reading, and they weren’t? >:(
October 20th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Nope, no joke- but according to Vicarious (to Nintendo Power by way of the below link) it happens pretty quickly (scroll about a third of the way down):
http://www.aeropause.com/2008/09/read-a-long-with-nintendo-power-234-november-2008/
October 20th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
I don’t know…..I’ve been looking forward to Guitar Hero World Tour for so long, but that article you linked to has me worried. I need to keep “about” 200 blocks free on the hard drive? Easier said than done. And how can they possibly compress each downloadable song to 200 blocks? I don’t know the exact block-to-megabyte ratio that Wii uses, but wouldn’t the songs basically sound like ass when compressed to the size of a SNES game? And what if you want to make a playlist of songs stored on the SD card? Will it be able to swap out each song on the fly, or will you only be able to enqueue one song at a time?
Vicarious Visions has never let me down before….it would seriously suck if they actually let Harmonix beat them in the DLC department.