Harmonix have further released details on how you will transfer the songs on the Rock Band 1 disk to Rock Band 2. Despite that fact that you only really need to swap the disks over, Harmonix are offering the option to transfer them from the disk to the hard drive purely for convenience.
Here’s what gets me. Obviously they can’t make it so you just transfer them to the hard drive for free because people will sell their original copies, rent existing copies or lend theirs to everyone. So I guess they’ve tried to make it simple by offering it at a small nominal fee. Less than five bucks is the figure thrown around but I’ve really got to question the logic here.
A copy of Rock Band could sell for more than that price, so what’s stopping people transferring the songs then selling their original. Then for less than five dollars you could get up to fifty eight tracks and at that price what’s to stop people renting or borrowing copies. Now you’ve got no other reason to charge people for this feature other than you would like to make money.
Plus Harmonix have been clever in their wording by saying that not all tracks will be transferable due to licencing agreements. That combined with the fact that this will realistically only be available to Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 users because there is no way those songs could fit on the Wii’s internal drive.
My point is that this could have been done a lot smoother at no cost. Maybe you register your copy of the game some how and it gets tied to your account or you enter in a serial code to redeem your tracks. Fine these ways don’t sound so smooth but I’m not afraid to admit it, I’m a tight-ass when it comes to money. If I could save $5 here by going through some laborious process of registering my game, then I’ll do it. Either way it appears that EA or Harmonix haven’t put much thought into this.
As the marketplace matures and as publishers figure out the correct prices for things it’s perfectly reasonable for content to be weirdly priced at times. It’s just a natural learning curve for companies to learn about pricing on a fairly new marketplace. Nevertheless this is still charging for content you already own and only for convenience purposes.
Then when you think that Rock Band was marketed as a ‘platform’ it’s quite bad to see them charging you for content you’ve already paid for. All of this just to access it on a new albeit slightly unnecessary version. Horse Armour 2.0? Probably not but I guess I’m just complaining because like many other’s I’ll eventually pony up and spend the money despite my best wishes.
No Comments to The Rock Band Transfer Fiasco
by cell989
On August 22, 2008 at 4:27 pm
This is disappointing, I payed $60.00 for my copy of RockBand 1 and now I have to pay more to play it in the new version???
by JayDee
On August 22, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I completely agree with you. I am curious as to how much memory this will take, because the 20G 360 owner’s might not be able to do it. I have always wondered if it would be possible for users to use their HD DVD Players as an additional disc holder, like you can have Rock Band 2 in your 360 and Rock Band 1 in your DVD drive, and be able to access both library’s with ease through game design. If this was possible, it could also be used with games that are too big to fit on one disk, like RPG’s, and expansion games.
by Phahtrox
On August 22, 2008 at 9:13 pm
The reason for the price is for songs that will, and probably have licensing issues.
No thought? This actually makes people WANT to buy RB2. 52 cheap songs. Downloadable songs are 2$(varies) each. Add it up.
by The Stevie H
On September 15, 2008 at 3:22 pm
It makes sense they charge, seeing as the artists will need fees for the usage. It’s like £4.25, so it’s not breaking the bank.
It took up like 1.7 to 2.6 GB I can’t remember exactly now.
I do wonder, when Rock Band 3 comes out… will we have to pay for Rock Band 2 songs to be exported, or will they have had the clever idea to sort a good license with the song makers. I gather RB 1 songs would work with RB 3 as all the songs are now on my 360 as individual DLC files.
It is cool that they are individual ones, as now you can delete any songs you dislike. I just kept them all.