I still think it's crap that they charge a $10 premium on the game, and what is up with GameStop giving a big FU to Wii owners?

Probably because the DLC infrastructure on Rock Band on Wii sucks.

If it's like Guitar Hero, then they can't give you codes outright for the song. Instead, they'd have to give you points to buy a song; in which case, they no longer can control what songs you get or if you even get a song.

That's how it is with Rock Band too. I seem to remember a lot of people on these forums getting a lot of free VC and WiiWare games during the last Pepsi Rock Band giveaway.

Yup!  ;D

Got like $100 worth of points for only a fraction of that cost. Something like $20-30 total spent.

...amazing how fast those points went...

Also, importing better be permitted for the Wii version. Rock Band already let's you do it. No importing option means I might just not get the game. I have enough different disks for music games as is.

It's clear that the 360 is the lead platform for Rock Band, and if you own that console you should definitely get it for that. Next would be PS3; you should only own the Wii version if you have no other choice.

My wallet already hurts. I'll get the MIDI adapter and use an existing keyboard, so at least I only need to buy the game itself at first. But eventually, I may well bite on that Fender guitar controller with real strings. I already have amps and would like to own an electric guitar, so if it can also be used for playing and learning guitar on RB3, that's a good investment.

Guilty as charged.

I'm hoping another such contest takes place at some point. And if it does, I'm relying on UncleBob to discover it again.

That's no small investment - I hear the adapter costs $40 (can't remember where I heard that, it might even have been on one of the RFN E3 specials).


I appreciate Harmonix for, you know, actually doing something new with this iteration of Rock Band, although I've already voiced how totally sick I am of this genre. Still though, there are some concerns I have about the addition of the keyboard.
First and foremost, how will it meld with the set-list? I'm willing to bet that many of the songs chosen for Rock Band 3 have no keyboard piece, so what, will players be unable to use it in these songs? Or will they throw together a note chart to let you play keyboard in this songs? Or will they have to be extremely selective and only use songs with keyboard parts? That could be a problem.
Secondly, this Pro mode... I can't wrap my head around how the game could keep up when the player is using a full-sized keyboard. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, even when using every key, you still only see two octaves on screen at any given time. Well, suppose you're playing chords on one end of the keyboard and playing the melody way over on the other end at the same time -- how is the game going to show you all this?


They're likely aware of these potential issues but I would like to know what they're doing about them. Even though I don't plan on buying the game.

Songs don't always support all the instruments. What does Green Day: Rock Band do for "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)"? That song only features only Billie Joe Armstrong playing a guitar and singing, so what did Harmonix do for drums?

Nobody bought the game, so it's still unknown.

Rush's YYZ is available in the Rock Band store. 'nuff said.

I believe most of the RB3 on-disc songs will have keyboard parts. It's not yet clear what will happen with DLC -- whether future DLC will include keyboard when relevant, and whether past DLC can/will be updated for keyboard support. However, we do know that the keyboard can be used to play guitar/bass parts if desired, so technically, the controller is compatible with all Rock Band songs.

The game interface only has two octaves, same as the game's keyboard controller. If you are playing with a full-length keyboard (through the MIDI adaptor), only two octaves on your keyboard would be active for the game. You can still play rhythm and melody, but they would be in adjacent octaves. This means that most keyboard parts in the game will not correlate exactly to playing the song outside the game, but in most cases, you should be able to simply transpose the left hand part to a different octave (the fingerings would be the same). Also, given how keyboard is utilized in most rock music, it's more likely that most of the keyboard parts will have no rhythm but will instead have the melody part straddling both of the available octaves.