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 [Reposted from my blog: www.mashedbuttons.com]

Today, EA and Harmonix officially announced Rock Band 2.  While they seem to be making a big play to keep owners of the first game happy, it raises some questions.

Most Rock Band players have been wondering how a sequel would work since the rumors started to fly about it a few months ago.  Namely, what happens with DLC?  Most Rock Band players I know own over 100 songs.  58 songs are included on the disk, so most people I know have somewhere around 50 DLC songs.  With an everage price of $1.99 that is close to $100 in DLC.  Surely, this is one of the best executed online DLC systems to data and it is being used by fans all the time.  The problem is, will Rock Band 2 support the old DLC and will players who don't upgrade still be able to get new DLC?  EA and Harmonix have save that they consider the platform to remain unchanged.  Basically, the format of the DLC files is the same for both games, thus they will both be able to play the same DLC.  Whew.

Well, hold on.  This seems cool, and it definitely makes me happy to know that the money I spent will not have been in vain, but I'm not sure how cool it is.  If the format of the DLC files doesn't change at all, doesn't that mean that Rock Band 2 won't have any new mechanics?  I mean, logically, if Rock Band 1 players can download the same song then there is no way it could include something that wasn't in the first game.  Also, the preipherals from both games will be interchangeable, so there is nothing new on that front.

If the mechanic and instruments are the same, why release a second game?  The new disk will have more songs, but as we know the Rock Band store is a great way to release new songs for the game.  They are supposefly improving character customization and tweaking how song selection works in Band World Tour mode.  Aren't those things more worthy of a patch? 

The question is now, what will make Rock Band 2 worth $60? Is it going to be another glorified expansion pack like Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80's or will it be something more?  Unless a bevy of improvements to the gameplay modes are announced along with some truly compelling content, I don't see this being worth it.  Maybe I'm lying, it would be worth it if it costs $60 and contains 35-40 songs, thus saving the player money over the normal $1.99 per song price.

Here is what would make me but Rock Band 2:

- 35-40 new, awesome songs. (Not including stupid bonus tracks recorded by Harmonix friends in a garage.)

- Better inclusion of DLC into Band World Tour.

- Support for a Band (from Band World Tour) to play any single song and have that score recorded, just like regular single-player careers.  Some bands want to just try to gold star a song and have that saved somewhere.

- Ability for bands to be able to better view their progress.  There is not way to currently view what songs a band has 5-starred or Gold-starred.

- Online voice chat.

- Ability for Rock Band 1 owners to convert disk based tracks to DLC so that only one game disk is needed to play all content.

- Play list creation.  Create a list of songs and play through that.  This could be one or more players, not the same has the make a set list in Band World Tour.

- Ability to hear the vocalist during online play.

- Ability to hear drum fills during online play.

- Online Band World Tour support.  You guys have been promising us this FOREVER.

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