Guitar Hero World Tour to cleverly use SD cards on Wii for song downloads
Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 4:43pm by Blake
GameDaily has the story, that’s informative and well worth your time. But here’s the really juicy part:
Players can either download songs to the Wii System Memory or store songs on a SD Card, called the “Rock Archive”. When you want to play songs from the Rock Archive, players can create a custom set list, and then choose a venue and play!
Thanks, SD Cards! What’s more, it sounds like the Wii version of Guitar Hero World Tour will match its 360/PS3 counterparts in every way, including both online cooperative and multiplayer, create a player mode, and the music editor.
Developer attitudes and excuses sure do change once you’ve established yourself as the leading console.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Excellent! Now I can finally use my 2 GB SD card to its full capacity!
They just need to put out a lot of songs, though.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Wireless connection through the Wiimote? Like the guitar? No USB dongle? Genius!!!
Download to swabable SD cards for unlimited storage capacity? Brilliant!!!
Why didn’t anyone else think of this???
June 20th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
“Why didn’t anyone else think of this?”
We did, man. We all thought of it. Unfortunately, the general attitude of publishers towards consumers is that the consumer is a complete retard and incapable of sentient thought.
Now if we can just convince Nintendo to let us transfer V-con downloads onto SDs so we can have all that space back on our Wiis without having to delete anything….
June 20th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
everyone needs to make sure to get the word about gh:wt and make sure nobody buys rock band for the wii.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
This bit of news seems very competitive as RB: Wii is due out this weekend. Activision surely knows how and when to release new info and keep the consumers happy.
October can’t come soon enough.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Why won’t Nintendo make the SD storage solution official?
June 20th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Great news!
June 20th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
rdaneel - i’m not so sure about the wireless connection to the wii via remote. it would be unfair to force everyone to buy 4 wii remotes to fully play the game.
June 20th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Bye bye Rock Band.
ben: Look at the pic. It looks like Wiimotes are the way they’re going. They did in GH3. Makes sense, though I can see the mic not using a Wiimote.
June 20th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I get the feeling that devs have wanted to do this in the past, but were prevented by Nintendo. I theorize that Nintendo is not sharing the knowledge, technology, or rights to access the SD cards in any way other than standard save files. Given that Nintendo and Activision seem to have a really good relationship right now, (see GH:OT + DS bundle), I think it further supports my theory.
June 20th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Ah, SD cards for songs? Me likey.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
“Developer attitudes and excuses sure do change once you’ve established yourself as the leading console.”
That statement isn’t exactly true, but I appreciate the enthusiasm and Activision’s commendable efforts. If only all developers thought the same way.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Nice to see a developer who treats Wii owners in an equal manner on a game they easily could not.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
So… let’s list all the features GH4 has and RB doesn’t.
DLC + online play + character customization + cymbals + touch sensitive guitar + GH3 compatibility + superior hardware quality (judgement based on previous peripherals) + better note charts + some wii specific functionality we haven’t learned of yet (mii’s?)
That’s a formula for epic win. Did I miss anything?
June 20th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
I can only hope that the Wii gets SDHC compatibility, then GH4 will be complete!!!
June 20th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
What’s that RockBand? It’s Nintendo’s fault you can’t get more money from DLC because of no hard drive? I thought it was because you didn’t care for the Wii but you MUST be right.
/sarcasm
Wow… I’m finding less things that’ll keep me from buying this when it’s out. Now that I think about it I’ll be happy to see Activision completely steal RockBand’s thunder and make the better experience. IF, and that’s a big one, IF Harmonix decides to ship a new RB this year to compete then it’ll surely be just as awesome a product, otherwise they’re just killing themselves.
June 20th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
krustopia1: Would SDHC require hardware update, or just a firmware update?
June 21st, 2008 at 1:12 am
Nintendo just needs to release a firmware update to access larger than 2GB SD cards.
At about $10 a pop for a 2GB SD card, that’s cheap enough that I won’t mind that sometime in the future I’ll need to swap them out for different games.
June 21st, 2008 at 2:38 am
A random piece of information. The Music Editor, while I’m not sure quite what it was, but if it is what I think it is, it is cut from the game (from all systems).
June 21st, 2008 at 2:29 pm
@Cory: The music editor wasn’t cut, the Jam Mode was.
dubnobasswithmyheadman: “So… let’s list all the features GH4 has and RB doesn’t.
DLC + online play + character customization + cymbals + touch sensitive guitar + GH3 compatibility + superior hardware quality
(judgement based on previous peripherals) + better note charts + some wii specific functionality we haven’t learned of yet (mii’s?)”
I don’t know why you’re comparing GH:WT and Rock Band 1 with each other, considering that Rock Band 2 has all but been announced, and will most likely launch within the same window as GT:WT. I think the reason Harmonix and EA had to ship the gimped version for Wii was because of the impending release of Rock Band 2 later this year, and they had to shift their focus onto that instead of “finishing” the first one. With the limited amount of time they had, they just couldn’t wait for Nintendo to release DLC storage possibilities to developers, which I’m guessing is what’s going on with this announcement.
Also, subjective things like the enjoyment of a game’s note charts is not something I would consider a “feature”, especially since they’ve only shown maybe five seconds worth of game play footage.
Blake: “Developer attitudes and excuses sure do change once you’ve established yourself as the leading console.”
I think that’s a pretty arrogant thing to say, considering that the only definite reason GH has more sales than Rock Band is brand name recognition.
June 21st, 2008 at 3:12 pm
so can you put any song on the wii and play?
June 21st, 2008 at 4:35 pm
@ John. No. You DOWNLOAD songs and can store them on SD cards if you need room.
June 21st, 2008 at 10:31 pm
@neko to kuruma
“I think the reason Harmonix and EA had to ship the gimped version for Wii was because of the impending release of Rock Band 2 later this year, and they had to shift their focus onto that instead of “finishing” the first one. With the limited amount of time they had, they just couldn’t wait for Nintendo to release DLC storage possibilities to developers, which I’m guessing is what’s going on with this announcement.”
The Wii is getting a gimped version out of pure laziness and “skepticism” of its success. Harmonix didn’t see the Wii as being a viable platform, so targeted the other consoles first.
If Activision hadn’t taken the first step with GH3 on the Wii, I doubt we would see a Wii version so soon. Only after seeing a good level of success with GH Wii, did they decide to “RUSH” their gimped-overpriced version.
Their excuse that it’s because the Wii doesn’t have the storage and it’s Nintendo’s fault is complete and utter BULLSHIT! It’s a LIE! The only reason there’s no downloadable content for the Wii or character creator, is because they’re porting it from the PS2. They didn’t deem that console as powerful enough to display real-time content, so instead used FMVs. So of course 512 megs and a SD card aren’t enough when your only option is to download massive videos.
Harmonix is dumping their hack-job onto the WIi only as an afterthought and as a quick cash-in while taking all possible shortcuts. Now they expect Wii owners to pay just as much as the PS360 versions, but for less features. No thanks, I’ll stick with Activision, they’re making an effort to get it right and haven’t lied to us in the process.
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:37 am
I really liked reading this part:
GD: If you already own GHIII for Wii, will those players be able to use their guitars with the new game?
KB: Absolutely! Wii players who own the Les Paul guitars from either GHIII or Guitar Hero: Aerosmith will be able to use them on Guitar Hero World Tour!
June 22nd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
“Developer attitudes and excuses sure do change once you’ve established yourself as the leading console.”
“That statement isn’t exactly true,”
Hehe, It’s ABSOLUTELY true.
June 22nd, 2008 at 7:09 pm
@neko to kuruma
I think it’s fair to compare GH:WT to RB1 because Harmonix/EA had plenty of time to come up with clever solutions on Wii, but chose not to. RB had a chance to deliver most of those features, but failed.
Also, it’s a pretty well accepted fact that the note charts in guitar hero are more advanced/difficult. I’d call that a feature. Perhaps I should have used the word “advanced” instead of “better”; I’ll give you that.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
This is amazing. Great work. the only negative is that we now need 3 wiimotes to fully enjoy the game (or does the mic use one too?). Man I hope they aren’t charging us the same amund as other systems. I only have two wiimotes, it would’ve been nice they took the bluetooth cost or made more affordable.
And that ends my 5 seconds of bad spotlight on World Tour. I’m gonna get that sucker anyway! In fact, I’m going to go get the DS version of Guitar Hero today! I f K-Mart has it in stock.
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
The SD HC needs different hardware to be read, which is Wii the Wii can only read cards up to 2 GB. I doubt the SD slot on the Wii is SD HC enabled since someone would have already found a way to use said cards.
2 GB is just fine since it amounts to 15,000+ blocks.