Rock Band 2 News - It’s Official
By Tyler Ryan on Jun 30, 2008 in News
The official announcement for Rock Band 2 has been made today. Only a few major details have been released, but we should expect some major announcements in the coming weeks (think the E3 Conference in 2 weeks) .
The Rock Band 2 release date has been set for September for the Xbox 360 release, and sometime later for the PS3.
Lead Designer Dan Teasdale confirmed, in an interview with IGN, that any DLC purchased for Rock Band will also be available in Rock Band 2. On top of that, all future DLC will be available for the original Rock Band as well.
“As far as Harmonix is concerned, there’s no difference between “Rock Band 1 DLC” and “Rock Band 2 DLC” – we’re just releasing awesome songs every week onto the Rock Band platform, all of which are playable by the Rock Band titles that support DLC.”
And while Teasdale was reluctant to confirm other details - it appears as though the PR people are keeping most of the Rock Band 2 info a secret until E3 - he did hint at some improvements in character creation, song customization, and multiple vocalists.
Teasdale also said that Harmonix has made improvements with the instruments and that they will be “quieter, more realistic, and more reliable instruments”. Expect the instruments to be wireless as well. The new Fender controller for Rock Band 2 looks very nice.
The Rock Band 2 Guitar Controller looks very releasitic - click for a larger view
Our favorite part, at the end of the interview, was when Teasdale said he was a “little offended” that the interviewer failed to mention some of his favorite bands from Australia, including “Billy Thorpe, Radio Birdman, INXS, Midnight Oil or Crowded House to your list of songs. I haven’t even started on modern bands like Regurgitator, Silverchair, Architecture in Helsinki, The Grates or Wolfmother!”
Is Teasdale starting to get the rumor mill going, or is he “unofficially” confirming songs for Rock Band 2?
Source: IGN - Rock Band 2: The Opening Act
To me, Guitar Hero WT’s setlist looks better than Rockband’s (so far).
Cyrus | Jun 30, 2008 | Reply
yeah I’m preferring GHWT to RB2 at the moment too and am wondering what region the September release date for 360 RB2 is. My assumption is that it’s USA and not Europe/UK where I live - Rock Band 1 only came out here in may on 360 and is coming to PS3 in early September.
Why most people would buy that instead of wait for a few months for rock band 2 to get with the new improved instruments and then buy rock band solus - assuming the instruments will be backwards compatible as the current instruments will be compatible with rock band 2 - I don’t know.
I can only imagine that we’ll have to wait another 6-10 months or so for rock band to ship to Europe. Not that I am complaining too much as I plan to buy a 360 before GHWT which I will be getting over RB2 and will buy RB2 and most likely borrow RB solus from a friend if the new GHWT controllers work with it as expected what with rock band being all for open sourcing peripherals and that.
ashers67 | Jun 30, 2008 | Reply