The faulty hardware hasn't tarnished my view of this game one bit -- it still hasn't left my 360's tray for the last 3 weeks!

I haven't played rock band, simply because I don'tknow anyone who has it.

Pretty sure it's the price of Rock Band that's the problem. When I bought mine. A lady was being help by a Best Buy person. She found out GH3 was sold out and was directed at Rock band. She looked interested at first. When she asked the price, she frowned and walked out with Assassian's Creed.

I've never played any Guitar Hero game nor Rock Band. In fact, I'm an odd gamer that has never bought any GTA or Madden game. Uniqueness FTW

The sales numbers for both versions of Rock Band have been known since the November NPD came out, they just were not posted on Kotaku.

As far as comparing Rock Band sales for 360 and PS3, next-gen.biz did so in their NPD analysis:
[www.next-gen.biz]

*Hoping to get it for Christmas*

I wonder if this simply the 170 bundle, or if stand alones are included (not than many were sold anyways)

Regardless of B&M sales numbers, I will be extremely interested to hear how much $$$ Harmonix/MTV/EA is pulling on DLC.

When the Guitar Hero DLC hits, all you hear are rallying calls for people to avoid it due to the forced track packs. In the last 2 days, everyone that owns Rock Band seems to be talking about how much fun it is to play Buddy Holly. EA's already coaxed about $30 out of me that Activision will never see with their current pricing structure.

GH1 didn't sell that well at first, and Rock Band is in pretty limited supply.

Once word spreads, and instruments are being sold separately, it will easily outsell GH3, because it's a far superior piece of software.

Good Job Harmonix/EA for not launching on the Wii. This Nintendo fanboy is glad you tanked. Those PS3 Rockband bundles stacked up at GameStop will make great coffee tables though.

@ckranger11: Buddy Holly and My Iron Lung and amazing on all 4 instruments. They're pretty easy, but I enjoy myself so much when playing them, I don't care about the difficulty.

In my honest opinion, $170 is much too much to ask for a game... even - with - proprietary peripherals. I have a hard time justifying $50 per a game, let alone $170 for a game I can't play unless I have a lot of friends over or sit online. Who has that kind of time this day and age? I play games five hours a week at most, what with a career, going back for more college and a wife/social life. At that price I would have to play it every day so that I don't feel bad about spending all the money on for the game to collect dust. As well as take up space.

@Goldwings

How, exactly is not playing good games, a win?

/skeptical

@clarke:
How can they put it on Wii when DLC is so important to the game? Gonna fit everything on that SD card?
I'm sure they could have done a gimped version, but whatever.

And it's not even out in Canada yet.

@topaz420: EXACTLY. its a shame it's so costly, when it's SO much better than gh3. D=

Agree on the DLC. I haven't downloaded one piece of GH2 or 3 stuff that's come out, but I bit the bullet for Buddy Holly and My Iron Lung and both are great on guitar (drums are next). unfortunately, my guitar finally crapped out on me during buddy holly (double strumming, mostly), so I had to pull out my GH2 Xplorer.

Have to say, going back to the old guitar was tough, I was finally getting used to the Strat and was really liking it (I hated the strum at first, then started to really like it, then it broke). I'm not used to the noise anymore, and it 'feels' like a toy in comparison (see, I put feels in quotes because obviously they're both toys, and neither feel nearly as good as a solid wood body electric).

Anyway, I hope I get it before christmas as i'm leaving for a week the day after. Luckily, i have a friend right down the road with a GH guitar so we can keep going over the weekend.

@Goldwings: The real feat would be if you have never played a Mario, Zelda, or Metal Gear Solid.

@darkslide: I am still able to play the game without downloadable content aren't I?

@Squanderdalfast: A game can be 'good' design-wise but 'bad' opinion/taste-wise. There are people out there who think the GTA series is a generic snore-fest. I am one of them. Aside from GTA 4, the others are visually unimpressive and the stories are pretty generic and over-the-top in an unfunny way. That's my opinion though. The game's coding is pretty solid, as is the control and game mechanics.

Actually, the software sales being reported by 1UP are incorrect or are for a different time period than the NPD reporting month of November. I know this because NPD provided the numbers for the month of November directly to the simExchange the day that they (the NPD) reported all the other numbers. Only the Xbox 360 sales were provided to the simExchange because that was all that was needed for the site's purposes. The sales of the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band for the NPD month of November was 311,900 copies.

Source: [the simExchange]

Erm.. there are none.. No one can find one, it wasn't available in Canada either, so there are a number of reasons why it's not up there..

2.18 million just from Wii and PS2 sales?

*Glares at Harmonix/MTV/EA*

So, how's about that Wii port? And please, don't make it half assed like the PS2 version. Thanks.

@Goldwings: You are not alone in your statement (although there is a good chance I will purchase a game from one of those franchises in the coming year).

@katorok: I live in Canada and have a copy pre-ordered. Today, however, I was shopping in Bangor, Maine, and came across a whole pile of them at a Wal-Mart. Of course, they may have just been put there.

@Custom Reality: What? GTA3/VC/SA's coding is pretty solid?

Oh, . . . so it must've been a creative design decision to limit it to no more than a dozen vehicles in view at a time. I had never understood that before.

I already ahd two GH2 guitars for my 360, so I just picked up the game by itself. I have no drums, but at least I can use my headset to sing. Even with just the two guitars, its still tons of fun.

Activision is incredibly lucky they have the name "Guitar Hero" attached to their rhythm game.

In any case, I work in GameStop, and all copies of Rock Band we get sell out by the end of the week, so it's doing good. Guitar Hero III's sales will slow down next year, and I expected Rock Band to continually sell as more and more people can afford it. The individual bundles won't hurt either.

@clarke: Of course. But it seems we've moved into an era where selling content for a game soon after it's released is considered a feature. Sorry, but the value of "DLC" is lost on me having played many PC games where you get the whole thing in the box or get more for free later on as a bonus for the $50 you already spent.

@SuperFox: I've never played a MGS game *blush* but that'll change with MGS4

I feel the urge to make some wisecrack involving mono sound, broken instruments, and the urge to call people who can 5-star 'Through the Fire and Flames' freaks of nature.

It's surprising to see GH3 sell so well.. the game experience is just bland..

Rock Band is great fun alone or with friends, online multiplayer is really awesome. I've met a lot of online friends and my friends list has grown tenfold.
Not to mention going back to GH3's animations... its just sad to see. Rock Band actually makes you excited to see the backgrounds. Your avatars are playing instruments and singing in sync to the song!

@Mezodon: Yeah because having no Rockband is better than having Rockband with downloadable content. You make a lot of sense. I've seen the light.

Those numbers seem to be in line with my findings that I've only seen 360 Rock Band on the shelves a couple of times (and bought one of them) but have seen far more PS3 copies available.

More importantly, Rock Band appeared on the tail end of November, and had initial shortages. Guitar Hero 3 was released in early or mid October if I remember correctly. The real test will be how Rock Band does in December.

I'd like to see Rock Band come to the Wii - and, as much as it causes me physical agony to say it, it would be a great...p-party game.

I could live with dialed down online options, or a lack of DLC initially.

I know that the Ps2 version is selling like crazy. The friend I mentioned once before has been searching frantically for a copy, and they're going for $300-400, assuming you can actually find one that isn't back-ordered.

Wait, so, and I'm being honest here, the Wii Shop Channel and hard drive could not support DLC for Rock Band? Like Rock Band songs are bigger than all of the N64 games? I don't know a lot about how big such files (or whatever they are called in this case) are. I would feel like the Wii would be able to get the extras to people, as well.

If the instruments hold up, there is no reason why this won't become my favorite game. New songs every week... geez. I feel those last 60 stars on Mario Galaxy will go neglected.

@Custom Reality:

Sorry, but you're misinformed. This game has a very robust single player mode.

Imagine being able to have Guitar Hero, Drum Hero, Bass Hero and Kareoke Hero all in one! That is single player.

This game is fantastic and is getting most of my play time, as well as getting much interest from friends who are not gamers or casusal gamers at best.

My guitar had a bum motion sensor and even though I had a Best Buy replacement plan to swap the whole thing, I opted for the online warranty exchange. I went for the $125 hold and they had me a perfect guitar in two days. I thought my USB Hub was bum too and warrantied that, but it is fine and was my error. They messed up and sent me a second guitar which I have opted to keep because it is also perfect.

So, even though I'm paying $125 instead of $80-$90, at least I have a full set and don't have to worry about dealing with sold out individual instruments which is bound to happen.

That is worth the extra $35 for me.

I can understand not paying $300 for that XBox Mech game, but $170 for three peripherals, four single player game and one multiplayer plus online dlc,

You have no idea the fun you are missing out on.

Also, the idea that modders are making these peripherals into actual electronic instruments (esp. the drums) adds value if you're any kind of musician.

Sorry your frugality is going to keep you from some serious fun.

In fact they sent me two

@CaptRonJ: The Wii does not have an internal hard drive, but it does have 512 internal flash memory with the ability to utilize an SD memory card, which are usually 512MB-4GB in size. There has been much speculation that Nintendo will eventually release its own proprietary hard drive or allow the usage of USB external hard drives that will really open things up a bit.

The recent "Punk Pack" on the PSN was 56.5MB total or 13-22MB for each single, and those are punk (typically shorter) songs. See: [blog.us.playstation.com]

All that said, apparently the GH3 DLC is going to find a way to come to the Wii in the new year, so I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see the eventual Wii Rock Band get their own DLC on the system. In fact, I'm personally betting that is part of the holdup.

@darkslide: Rock Band PS2. So what was that about DLC that warranted no Wii version?

I'm unhappy. I'm getting fucked sideways by EA. My guitar and drums are broken, and I haven't recieved the new drums. Haven't said a thing about my guitar. I have 4 days to return the broken drums before they charge me $125 for the new set. Haven't recieved the new set, yet, though! I'm going to end up paying three hundred dollars for Karaoke Revolution: Rock Edititon.

@ckranger11: thanks, that explains a lot to my technically feeble mind. appreciated.

@CaptRonJ: I was gonna answer, but ckranger11 beat me to it.

Either they will eventually come out with their own hard disk, open up USB support for other hard-drives, or allow usage of SD cards for actual gaming purposes. There's no 'lose' scenario for them to create more ways to save things on the Wii.

@InsidiousTuna (ChickenOfTheSea to some): Don't pay. If you don't have the drums, don't pay.

Though on a side note, today marks the 1 month anniversary since my guitar broke and I filed for a new guitar.
I also found out today that they forgot to ship it to me. Yeah, that's right. It was delayed, but then once it was ready, they forgot to send it.

So wii and ps2 combined made up well over half of the sales of the game, but activision treats us the worst?

Also, rock band is much more fun than gh3. The only downside is that now that I'm home from school, gh3 on the wii doesn't seem so fun compared to RB on my roommate's ps3.

Not bad, but not necessarily good. I think Rock Band may be one of those games that stays in the chart for a while, like New Super Mario Bros. This game will sell on word of mouth and more than likely, provide a steady, if unspectacular, number of sales each week/month.

@Kirbytheslayer: Inside jokes get him more followers: They already have my account info. They'll take my money. I'm gonna just say "fuck it" and hope I get enough money working over Christmas to buy a whole new set. I'm pissed, but there's nothing I can do.

I was having a blast playing it, until my foot pedal broke an hour ago. EA damn well better replace it for free and in a timely fashion, or I'll be PISSED.

Fuckin' Boston.

@InsidiousTuna (ChickenOfTheSea to some): Complain. Complain enough, and all your problems get solved.

I hate to say that, because it makes you sound like those whiny bastards who sue for everything, but if you literally get screwed over, and you complain, they'll usually just solve your problem and over-accommodate you to make sure you're not one of those whiny bastards who sue for everything.