Harmonix: Rock Band Wii DLC was dependent on Wii HDD
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 2:47pm by Jack
For Harmonix, SD cards are not enough — they wanted a Wii HDD. So, as a result of the no Wii hard drive thing, Rock Band for the Wii was gimped.
In an interview with CVG today, Rob Kay, design director at Harmonix, blamed the lack of storage space as the primary reason why Wii Rock Band owners will not be able to download extra songs via DLC. In this day and age everyone is pretty familiar with how hard drives work, I think, so I’m partially with him on that. Nintendo: either allow direct SD access in game, deliver a cheap proprietary HD (because you just know it will be proprietary if its Nintendo branded), or allow users to connect via USB one of their own.
Playing Devil’s Advocate for a moment however, this still doesn’t explain the six month delay in getting Rock Band to the Wii. It’s the same game. Nothing added. Harmonix, you can deflect and distract all you want, it still doesn’t negate the fact that you lost millions upon millions of dollars by not having a Wii version alongside the Xbox 360 and SP3 ones last year.
UPDATE: A good catch, peshue: “You can access sd in games. I think maybe you can’t download directly to the sd though, that’d explain why they couldn’t do it.” My bad on that one.
[A tardy thanks to Lino, who also sent this tip in]
April 9th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
The delay can easily be explained. They were waiting for more information on Nintendo’s online strategy, nothing notable changed, so they said, “Screw it!” and just ported the PS2 version. There’s always the option to make patches to add DLC if Nintendo ever changes their mind.
April 9th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
“Playing Devil’s Advocate for a moment however, this still doesn’t explain the six month delay in getting Rock Band to the Wii. It’s the same game. Nothing added. Harmonix, you can deflect and distract all you want, it still doesn’t negate the fact that you lost millions upon millions of dollars by not having a Wii version alongside the Xbox 360 and SP3 ones last year.”
I would guess that the last six months have been spent going back and forth with Nintendo to try to figure out when/if they are going to provide a Hard Drive or direct SD support (which, really, should be the easier, firmware update, solution), but finally Harmonix said “screw it.” This way at least they’ll get some Wii players, even if those of us in the know aren’t going to bother with a gimped version.
April 9th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
neko to kuruma: Wow, great minds, and all that …
April 9th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Still doesn’t explain the lack of modes and online.
You know what does?
Lazy PS2 port.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
You can access sd in games. I think maybe you can’t download directly to the sd though, that’d explain why they couldn’t do it.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
The wii really does need some kind of hard drive and I mean it’s not like hard drives are very expensive these days. You would think this problem would have been solved already. Who knows why they haven’t.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
@peshue
If Brawl can save snapshots to SD, then Rock Band could grab song files from the internet and save it to SD.
April 9th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
How about having a Rock Band site where you can purchase the songs from your computer then load them to the SD card. I mean, if they are worried about illegal file sharing, they could encode it the same way they do the Virtual Console games. I mean, all they would need is our Wii Code, correct?
April 9th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
@dubnobass
I didn’t know that, I didn’t have brawl (shame). Wel then I’ll go back t my first thought, they’re just making up reasons for why it’s just a ps2 port with nothing added.
April 9th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
That’s a good idea Pnut, but they’ve already shown their laziness on the matter.
Even in that case, it would still be better for them to offer a direct service via the Wii, since they could embed data from the Wii at download, creating some kind of Wii-specific lock method.
They need to drop the price. I’m certainly not paying full price for a another WiiS2 game.
This whole situation reeks oF BULLSHITE!
April 9th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Harmonix is now synonymous with Snake Oil in my book.
April 9th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Will Nintendo please just get over themselves are release a hard drive already?? We need more space for VC and WiiWare games, plus I’d like to see downloadable content and levels.
April 9th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Harmonix just wanted to port the gimped PS2 version to the Wii for a quick cash-in. I doubt they even had Rock Band Wii in mind before seeing the sales for GH3. The Wii HDD is an excuse for their laziness.
April 9th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
ou should be able ot directly download to SD cards. In Brawl you can play stages and view pictures directly from them. You can even watch replays directly from SD cards. Whenever you save a picture, replay or stage you always have the option of sending the file straight to the Wii or to the SD card. In fact saves straight to the SD card are faster. One complete revolution faster in most cases. (the little circle pokeball like thing that spins when saving Wii data).
The picture and replay demo icons also load faster form SD cards than from Wii system memory, meaning that sD cards are better than the Wii’s flash, or at least my SD card is. It’s not even an expensive one, in fact it’s a cheap one I bought over a year and a half ago. 1 gig in size. it aves equally as quickly to my 2 gig SD card I bought a few months ago. Excite Truck and Endless Ocean, both Nintendo published and developed games allow for music to be played directly from the SD card slot. The only limit of the slot is its’ 2GB limit. There’s nothing stopping Harmonix, but Nintendo’s policies or their laziness.
In past quotes about Wiiware it’s been said that Nintendo is allowing developers full access to the Wii system’s abilities including the SD card slot, and if I remember correctly the usb ports. If so, why couldn’t they allow for the retail version of rockband to have an option called “Wii Warez”? Using WiiWare they could both sell their tracks and allow for the use of usb hard drives or settle for the SD card slot.
April 9th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I agree with Scott’s idea from the Ep. 99 of the podcast: “why can’t they just release SD cards with songs on them… it’d work something like a cartridge”
This makes perfect sense to me, no direct download (I don’t agree but sure if that’s the problem), encoding issue (could be encoded easily), and then you’d just have to go buy the SD cards that have the songs you want on them.
April 9th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Harmonix hired “Pi Studios” to develop Rock Band for Wii. Pi Studios also developed the PS2 port and they’ve NEVER developed a Wii game, this is why the Wii is getting the Shaft. Chalk it up to inexperience and laziness, and a limited budget.
I’m pretty sure that even if the Wii had a HDD, Harmonix would not have supported it, making up some other BS excuse.
But I’m also waiting for Nintendo to release a better storage solution, or at least opening up the SD for my VC games. SD is secure-digital, so what’s stopping developers from using the secure part… I doubt it’s Nintendo.
April 9th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
What Ben said. Just release an effin’ hard drive Nintendo and stop being so effin’ stubborn about it.
April 9th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
So every 360 has an HD now?
April 9th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
@peshue
Yeah, unless Nintendo is hiding the API’s necessary to access the SD slot, (or preventing it by some legal mumbo jumbo), then 3rd parties should be able to read/write to SD no problem. Brawl read/writes so it’s proven to be possible. Does anybody know of any 3rd party games that read and/or write? I want to rule out the possibilities I mentioned above (the API’s and legal crap).
April 9th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
So, what’s their excuse for porting the half-assed PS2 version? DLC is just a bonus, the game itself, they’re half-assing it. As many issues as GH3 Wii had, it always seemed they were at least trying, throwing in little Wii specific touches, supporting online, and handled their issues fairly well, with a free and relatively quick disc exchange and faceplate compensation. Rock Band, a late release, porting the lame PS2 version, it’s completely obvious this is a quick and dirty hack job to make a quick buck.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
@Hunter
No, there is indeed the one version (live arcade ver.) that doesn’t, and it was specifically designed to be an arcade-only machine (which is stupid, and why no one is buying it). It’s supposed to be aimed at casual, coin-op players. These people are not the ones who are buying the enormous, expensive, made for 3+ people Rock Band contraption.
RB was made for people with new systems and hard-drives with loads of storage - for years of DLC. Harmonix may be guilty of taking the easy way out by porting the PS2 version, but they have a legitimate reason for doing so. If Nintendo is going to be so stubborn as to stand in the way of the natural evolution of console technology (online AND off) YET AGAIN, then you can’t really blame Harmonix for wanting to minimize their costs. Why spend the same time and effort (ie - $$$) for a version that is gimped by the console in question?
I bought my Wii for the VC and the latest round of 1st party titles, because I knew damn well that Nintendo would disappoint with online and hardware. They’re stuck in the console world of 15-20 years ago, and despite Sony also being a Japan-based vg company, they’ve refused to acknowledge what progress means.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:01 am
But it’s not gimped by the console and they’re obviously not spending the time to do it right. Their PS2 port is gimped . It’s nothing more than a hack port by inexperience developers on a low-ball budget.
Since they’re obviously not spending the effort to do this right, why should should we bother paying full price for an unfinished product.
This is the same company that completely contradicted themselves when they talked about why the Wii version won’t have DLC; And now they’ve changed their excuse to the HD, that’s BS. If a user is paying $170 for a plastic guitar set, they’ll fork out extra for a SD card, and most of us already have.
And EA has its own servers, which don’t require friend codes. MoH2 already uses them. So what’s stopping Harmonix…
I personally call an actual pointer progress.
April 12th, 2008 at 1:15 am
ANOTHER GIMPED MUSIC GAME FOR THE WII. you were expecting otherwise? really?
Here’s my theory, Nintendo told them to make a channel for the game so they could sell their music, since they don’t want anyone messing inside their store and got their own Wiiware to focus on. These guys want something already set up so they don’t have to spend any money on making a virtual store since they are already working on the sequel. If Nintendo allowed the BBC to release their tv channel for the Wii as a channel, they are not blocking stuff, just need to setup their own stuff inside the console (just like the Mario Kart channel and Wii Fit channel) and games can access the SD CARD, so the hard drive isn’t necessary. Not forgetting these kind of developers see the Wii as their 3rd choice, even if where the game (probably) will sell the most.
April 12th, 2008 at 11:24 am
I think that it is reasonable for Harmonix to do this. As I mentioned when this was first announced while the slew of comments were raining down hate it is unreasonable to expect developers to jump through all of these ridiculous hoops.
April 12th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
to Daniel Primed:
So they are offering a discount to lower the price compared to other consoles? I see the same price with less features…