Comparing Rock Band Wii drums with current drum kit

by David Hinkle { Jun 11th 2008 at 5:00PM }

For those of you still down with Rock Band for the Wii, despite its lack of DLC, you'll be interested to know that IGN recently took the Wii drum kit for a spin. Apparently, when Rock Band first released on the PS3 and Xbox 360, some folks were having trouble with the bass pedal (among other things), so a revision to the hardware was initiated. With the Wii drum kit, all of those changes are already in effect.

IGN says it best, though: "If you have the option, buy Rock Band for any console that's not the Wii, as you'll get the same drums (in black) and have access to downloadable content." Seriously, the Wii version isn't going to be that good, but if it's your only option, we wish you the best in rocking out and cross our fingers that Rock Band 2 isn't as lacking in the features department when it hits retail shelves.

Gallery: Rock Band

Tags: drum-kit, drums, ea, electronic-arts, harmonix, rock-band

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Sonic_13 @ Jun 11th 2008 5:52PM

I'm not planning on getting Rock Band (and never was), so I suppose this really doesn't matter, but....

What really bothers me about this game is not so much the fact that there is no online or DLC (both of which could have easily been added, as both are fully supported by Nintendo), but rather the lame excuses Harmonix put forth about why they couldn't add such features.

Metayoshi @ Jun 11th 2008 6:14PM

The folks at Harmonix make good points though. The average of each downloadable song in Rock Band is around 30 MB, while the Wii only has 512 MB of storage space shared by any WiiWare, Virtual Console games, and game saves that you have. It's truly the stubborn folks at Nintendo's fault, who claim that a Hard Drive for the Wii is pointless and say that using an SD card or just deleting your WiiWare/VC games is the way to go.

Sonic_13 @ Jun 11th 2008 6:54PM

There is no reason why Harmonix couldn't have utilized the SD card slot. Plenty of other games utilize the SD slot.

For example, I use the SD card slot to play MP3s while racing in Excite Truck. I encode my music at a very high quality too, so these aren't small files yet the music still loads instantly. There is just no reason why Harmonix couldn't have done something similar.

Nintendo needs to look at opening up the SD card slot rather than releasing a hard drive. A hard drive would simply be overkill on Wii. A 2gig SD card would provide 16,000 blocks of free space, more than enough to download everything in the Wii Shop Channel several times. It would also be the cheapest option.

goboColossus (LIVE, PSN - gobopop) @ Jun 11th 2008 7:12PM

I finally deleted my Rock Band DLC on my Xbox 360 HDD. 3.4 GB. (Getting Elite, rather re download than transfer the same massive ammount fragmented data)

I don't think a 2 GB SD card would cut it. Plus for game content that needs to be accessed on the fly, it's read speeds just wouldn't cut it. Nintendo needs an external HDD / SSD for the Wii for any game to allow for massive expanded content options. To believe otherwise would make you a tool, stop being a tool... We NEED Mass External Storage!

Manolo Sanchez @ Jun 11th 2008 6:10PM

The man on top of me speaka da truff

Patrick @ Jun 12th 2008 12:30AM

I am actually planning to get Rock Band tomorrow :D. And I am taking IGN's advice (although I was going to do this any way) and get the 360 version. Wii is cool and all, but when I can get a choice of DLC and better graphics (graphics aren't that big of a deal, but if I have a choice), and the 360 is cheaper at Sam's since the Wii one is JUST coming out. I mean I don't see an advantage at buying the Wii one at all. If all you have is a Wii, get it for Wii, but not if you have a choice. But ya I expected this, I didn't think they were going to make it any better at all. Hell I'm surprised that they made the drums white.