Harmonix Wants A Hard Drive On The Wii
Sure, it's terrific that the incredibly awesome Rock Band is going to be released on the Nintendo Wii, but it's a little sad that it's going to be slightly gimped, with no downloadable songs available. Sony and Microsoft have both made extras available for download via their online services, but Nintendo is still taking baby steps into the world of online gaming. But it's not the online structure Nintendo has set up that's preventing DLC... it's the lack of adequate storage space.
"Come on Nintendo, we need a hard drive," said Rob Kay, design director at Harmonix, when asked about the issue in a recent interview with CVG. "That's what we want. The whole problem is there's nowhere to store it. If the platform could do it, we'd jump on it. It's something that we championed to Nintendo, that we'd like to do it. Who knows what will happen down the line, I don't know what's coming down the line, but that's the reason there's no DLC in Wii Rock Band"
Sigh. It's too bad, because the downloadable songs are one of the best things about Rock Band, and they help keep the game in my 360 on a regular basis. Always something new to play. But it seems to me that while a hard drive would be ideal, there should be some kind of solution they could devise using the SD card storage medium Nintendo decided to use on the console. The prices are pretty reasonable, and it seems to me you could fit quite a few songs on a 2GB card. Then again, I've never been known for my technical know-how, and could be talking a whole lot of bollocks. What do I know?
"Come On Nintendo, We Need A Hard Drive" Says Rock Band Dev [CVG]
Wootini
Posted to Video Games on 9 April 2008
· Comments (4)
Other stuff like this: downloadable content, harmonix, nintendo, rock band, wii
I think they've (Nintendo/thirdparties) have done a good job so far considering it lacks one, but it's a shame they didn't come up with a way to add one later on down the road. I'd imagine the price of a smaller HD could run the price of Wii Fit.
but but but.... what about the SD card? Can't we use that??? I don't want to buy an extra HDD for my wii :-(
"Sigh. It's too bad, because the downloadable songs are one of the best things about Rock Band, and they help keep the game in my 360 on a regular basis. Always something new to play. But it seems to me that while a hard drive would be ideal, there should be some kind of solution they could devise using the SD card storage medium Nintendo decided to use on the console."
1- Nintendo refuses to release the hooks that they need to implement the store properly
2- The card reader bus is incredibly slow on the Wii, it's designed for loading cartridge images or save games into RAM and leaving them there. remember this was essentially an overclocked Gamecube. They don't have the RAM to load the track beforehand and have the game in there too. In addition, if people are paying $2 a song, and then $20 a card (most people don't know how to shop) every time they download 15 songs or so, how well is that going to go over?
Bottom line, the Wii needs a hard drive to make DLC practical
I just wouldn't waste my time with a crippled Wii version in the first place frankly
Granted I've never owned any kind of rythm/music game aside from Parappa and the INXS version of Make my Video, and I'd rather brush up on my real life instrument skills than strum on a piece of plastic.
But from my understanding, there isn't actually much *in* the DLC for these games. The Song is an MP3 file, and there has to be some kind of text file that contains timings and notes to be played. All in all, don't expect more than 5-10 megs per song. A 1 Gig SD Card - even the "made for Wii" ones ^^ - can certainly pack plenty of these.
Hard drives suck. They are loud and use loads of electricity. SD cards will come down in price over time, so there really is no point in developing an HDD that will be released by the Wii's EOL and pack 1 Tera when all you need is an 8 Gig SD for (then) a tenner...