Awesome, is each song going up on there at separate times? I'll probably just wait until the full album is up.

It was mentioned a few pages ago that it will be released as the tracks pass through review. No waiting.

[youtube]bROm1TjsAM4[/youtube]

[youtube]GJMQALCslYM[/youtube]

Any word on when then rest of the album will be up?

Right now the rock band network pipeline is shut off to transition the network into supporting Rock Band 3's infrastructure, so there will be a delay, but once it goes back up we will be able to pump out the tracks one after another.

All of the tracks are effectively done, and we're going through each of them and utilizing this window of time to make sure the tracks are perfect. On the upside, we will be supporting some of the rock band 3 features in the tracks like the trill lanes, fast strumming lanes, new drum features and the new venue features available in RB3.

There will most likely be no keys or vocal harmonies; we're still discussing the inclusion internally, but 95% of the synth is background ambience that we wouldn't be able to utilize without fundamentally changing the songs and adding vocal harmonies would require extra work and playtesting that would delay the album's release further. I'm not saying that for sure we won't do harmonies, it's more likely we won't than we will.

[Octillus]

Right now the rock band network pipeline is shut off to transition the network into supporting Rock Band 3's infrastructure, so there will be a delay, but once it goes back up we will be able to pump out the tracks one after another.

All of the tracks are effectively done, and we're going through each of them and utilizing this window of time to make sure the tracks are perfect. On the upside, we will be supporting some of the rock band 3 features in the tracks like the trill lanes, fast strumming lanes, new drum features and the new venue features available in RB3.

There will most likely be no keys or vocal harmonies; we're still discussing the inclusion internally, but 95% of the synth is background ambience that we wouldn't be able to utilize without fundamentally changing the songs and adding vocal harmonies would require extra work and playtesting that would delay the album's release further. I'm not saying that for sure we won't do harmonies, it's more likely we won't than we will.

So does that mean they're RBN 2.0 only? Because that sucks. I don't own Rock Band 3, and I already bought ZTO

Unfortunately for RB2 holdouts, yes, but it's well worth the transition into RB3 ever since they patched the note highways to not be stupid amounts of transparent. Also, we've been discussing recently doing harmonies on select songs out of the album that would really benefit from them such as Color Your World, The Greys, etc.; I'll keep you guys updated on the status of that.

[Octillus]

I'm afraid I'll have to pass for a good long while then. I just don't play the game enough to justify the purchase. I understand your guys' hand was forced, not mad or anything, but I was given rock band 2 as a gift, and I pretty much sing exclusively, so this really bums me out.

Thanks for the update. Waiting patiently for the tracks. =]

I'm afraid I'll have to pass for a good long while then. I just don't play the game enough to justify the purchase. I understand your guys' hand was forced, not mad or anything, but I was given rock band 2 as a gift, and I pretty much sing exclusively, so this really bums me out.

Hey no worries. As long as you're at least getting to experience ZTO we're happy. Perhaps down the line once we get Addicted out and give Dev a chance to decide if he want's to do further albums in RBN, we can use our evil mind powers to sway you to the RB3 side .

Hopefully Rock Band isn't heading the same way... http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/09/guitar ... google_cnn

Hopefully Rock Band isn't heading the same way... http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/09/guitar ... google_cnn

I think it is only a matter of time before support for RB is cut off too. We already saw Wii RBN DLC shut down and now I would imagine that HMX would watch how much of a difference it makes to their finances and the next to go would be PS3 RBN DLC followed by entire DLC shut down. I would imagine that RBN for Xbox 360 would be last to go because AFAIK HMX only approves of the material being submitted and doesn't actually do any thing else in the creating process.

I kind of figured GH would eventually be let go since GH:WoR sold horribly and their weekly DLC was cut down to bi-weekly and without announcement almost monthly.

I only own GH:Metallica and rarely play it so I am not effected by this at all (except I believe the recent CoB DLC should have been on RB3... they have the keyboard for Christ's sake!) but I feel bad for the die hard fans of that series.

Right now rock band's in a relatively comfortable spot; Harmonix hit a good home run with Dance Central, and their standard DLC actually does fairly well. Most of the setbacks harmonix has seen are licensing costs involved with releasing the Beatles rock band and a low consumer demand for the pro guitar peripheral, but the keyboard peripheral sold fairly well and now with guitar hero out of the picture they won't need to do any big single artist releases anymore to compete for shelf space with GH.

What I foresee is the minimalizing of pro guitar support in the future and no more band centric games as green day rock band and beatles rock band both underperformed.

The RBN content on wii has nothing to do with the profitability of the system as a whole, and more to do with the costs incurred in porting over to the wii. They weren't 'cutting anything back', they simply just couldn't afford to support a platform that was fighting them the whole way. I highly doubt that if harmonix keeps performing at the rate they're currently performing at that we'll see any major cut backs to the Rock Band platform; only if there is a sudden unexpected economic downturn for them.

My guess is that they're going to simultaneously develop more commercial projects like Dance Central and funnel the profits into expanding the RB platform. Now that all of the people who only bought into guitar hero won't see any future games in the series, they might be more likely to pick up a copy of rock band since they've already put that much money into music games to get the plastic instruments.

Regardless, there's no threat in the near future and on the foreseeable horizon that harmonix will be cutting back any part of the RB platform aside from what they already have on the wii. RBN is a stable platform with how the sales are handled, and RB standard dlc even more so. As far as I know, there's no real extra costs incurred to putting out tracks on PS3 than what there is to put it out on 360, it's just that without the XNA development platform, it takes that much longer to be able to get the content up since it has to go through a sony approval system.

The main difference between the fate of GH and the fate of RB is that harmonix is entirely invested in the production of music games, whereas activision is a multistudio conglomerate that can afford to cut projects that aren't performing as well as they want. Harmonix can take a hit or two with underperforming sales of a game.

I suspect they'll roll back their production schedule to 1 core game every 2 years or so. The music game genre really doesn't need more than that, and harmonix works best when they're given the time to get it perfect. RB3 could have done so much more for the genre if they hadn't been pressured into a narrow time schedule to compete against WoR.

Well I'll be playing on easy.

Sweethammer,

Thanks for the reassuring words. The only thing that would make it better now is if someone would say that HMX is still willing to release real metal DLC like they have in the past and that they really haven't let RBN take that. I love me some rock and the classic rock DLC we were receiving after RB3's launch was a warm welcoming but something tells me Wii won't be seeing a lot of metal anymore.

I have been reading that now that the competition is gone HMX can "slack off" a bit and won't feel obligated to always release the high quality DLC they have been for the last 2+ years. I think that is bullshit. They'll continue to release great songs and just have more reason now to win over those GH hardcores who haven't bothered to look into the Rock Band franchise yet.

Damn sad to see Guitar Hero go but I always felt that Rock Band was the superior product even if I only came into the scene a few months before RB3's launch.