Here’s what I’ve been able to gather so far on the soon-to-be-released Rock Band for the Wii.

As for Wii Connectivity, there will no online play on the Wii. With the current dearth of support for online play on the Wii, this isn’t surprising.

Even though Nintendo tried to push Wii as an online system, except for Virtual Console games and Wii Ware, this  seems to be lagging way behind.

The will also be no DLC, since Nintendo hasn’t used the Wii store for DLC for games yet. This is a shame but isn’t surprising either.

The Wii version of Rock Band will be offering five extra songs to make up for these lacking features. It is still unannounced which five extra songs they will be though.

The Wii’s drums have been rebranded for the Wii, making them white.

None of these accessories will require a Wii Mote to work. This is opposed to the Guitar Hero 3 Guitars that require a Wii-Mote plugged into them.  The guitars are similar to the PS3/PS2. This should make the Rock Band for the Wii a great deal for anyone that only has a Wii. or if the Wii is more convenient for family playing, or with local friends.

If you have a PS3, or 360 though you may still want to get one of those for the downloadable extras.

MTV Games, Harmonix and EA announced Monday that they would release the best-selling music video game Rock Band on the Nintendo Wii in the U.S. and Canada on June 22 for the suggested retail price of $169.99.

“The Wii’s success among casual and core gamers of all ages makes it an ideal match for the cross-generational appeal of the music featured in Rock Band,” said Bob Picunko, Vice President of Electronic Games and Interactive Products, MTV.

Rock Band for Wii will be released as a Special Edition bundle including the software, drums, microphone and a wireless guitar, the developers said. Stand alone instruments will also be available on June 22nd.

The game will feature drum versus drum battles and 63 built-in songs.

“The social interaction and addictive nature of the Rock Band experience is a perfect fit for the Wii and will undoubtedly be fun for the entire family,” said Steve Singer, Nintendo’s vice president of licensing.

Since their releases, Guitar Hero and Rock Band have defined the music game genre, brought new people to video gaming and won dozens of major industry awards.

For more information on Rock Band and Harmonix Music Systems tune to www.rockband.com and www.harmonixmusic.com.

Here is the compete text of the Activision statement received by Blast December 14.

To Music Gaming Fans:

The recent announcement by MTV Games/Viacom’s Harmonix division that Activision is blocking Sony from releasing a patch and their plea to enable Rock Band software to work with Guitar Hero hardware paints a very misleading picture.

In fact, Harmonix and its parent company MTV Games/Viacom recently declined Activision’s offer to reach an agreement that would allow the use of Guitar Hero guitar controllers with Rock Band. We have been and remain open to discussions with Harmonix and MTV Games/Viacom about the use of our technology in Rock Band. Unfortunately for Rock Band users, in this case Harmonix and MTV Games/Viacom are unwilling to discuss an agreement with Activision.

Activision’s top priority is to provide consumers with a seamless marriage of best-in-class hardware and software. We are focusing our efforts on innovating hardware and software that are designed to work together, work flawlessly and provide an enjoyable gaming experience.

Best regards,

Activision

Many people bought Guitar Hero III. Some of them bought it with Rock Band to be able to add the second guitar to Rock Band, to, you know, make a band.

Much to the surprise of many, the guitar for the Playstation 3′s Guitar Hero III will not work with Rock Band.

Adding to the drama, Harmonix recently claimed that Activision is actively working to keep things this way. Activision, for its part, said December 14 that they offered to help Harmonix fix the problem, and Harmonix refused.

It looks like the kids won’t play nice.

In a statement released on December 12, Harmonix announced that they finished a patch for Rock Band that will allow it to work with third party guitars, including the Guitar Hero III instrument. Harmonix claimed the work was completed, approved by Sony and scheduled to be released on Dec. 4 until, they claim, Activision objected to the release of the patch.

“The patch remains with Sony, but we have been told that it will unfortunately not be released due to Activision’s continued objection,” Harmonix said.

Harmonix is saying they believe that all guitars and peripherals should be compatible. They are backing up this claim by planning to release all details of their controllers and assist any development team desiring to work with them. They also asked that Activision release an update for their Guitar Hero III game to add support for Rock Bands guitar.

Activision says that they offered to reach an agreement with Harmonix to support the Guitar Hero III guitar in Rock Band, but Harmonix refused their offer. They are blaming Harmonix for being unwilling to discuss an agreement to the compatibility issue. Activision stated,

“We have been and remain open to discussions with Harmonix and MTV Games/Viacom about the use of our technology in Rock Band," said in a statement released to Blast by Activision spokesman Jordan Dodge.”We are focusing our efforts on innovating hardware and software that are designed to work together, work flawlessly and provide an enjoyable gaming experience.” (Click here for the full statement)

So now we have both companies claiming they want the compatibility but that the other is stopping them — Harmonix blaming Activision for blocking the update, Activision blaming Harmonix for not agreeing to work with them on the compatibility.

Clearly, Activision and Harmonix are not making beautiful music together.

This is much larger implications. Activision’s merger with Blizzard makes it one of the largest interactive entertainment companies ever. Harmonix is owned by MTV Games, which is owned by Viacom, and Rock Band was partially distributed by Electronic Arts/EA Partners (if you look on the Rock Band box, you’ll see EA’s logo).

Gee, the two biggest gaming competitors are not cooperating? Whowouldathunkit?

Blast Magazine staff writer John Guilfoil contributed to this report.

This just in to the Blast Magazine Newsroom from our Senior Gaming Reporter, Bradley Ouellette:

If you have Rock Band, you’d probably like to get a second Guitar. Well looks like, for the Playstation 3 at least, you won’t ever be able to use the Guitar Hero 3 Guitar.

Harmonix made a patch for Rock Band that they submitted to Sony to be released December 4. The patch was approved by Sony, but before it could be released, Activision objected to the patch, and Sony is now not releasing it.

Harmonix is the company that originally made the Guitar Hero Series, but later sold the rights to Guitar Hero 3 to Activision. Harmonix wants the guitars to be completely compatible with all games and open. They have offered to give other game companies the specs behind their guitars and help in supporting them.

We will have a full report on this story later on. Stay tuned!

Rock Band builds on the phenomenon started by Guitar Hero by using four instruments in 13 gameplay combinations, giving you deep and detailed playability. This includes solo play of each instrument, competitions and co-op play, forming your own band.

The game includes two guitar parts (bass and lead guitar), drums and a microphone. But you can’t form a band with two of the same instrument.

When I sat down to try the drums they were interesting but very tricky. You need to hit different drums at different beats, which is hard for someone that doesn’t know anything about drums.

It turns out that the game focuses on the foot pedal and the left most drum. If you concentrate on those you can afford to miss the others without failing out as easily. At first I was trying to hit everything and missing most of them. After I started concentrating on the left drum and the foot I would still miss a lot, but I could get through a song.

The Drums seem very reliable and will take a good amount of abuse. Harmonix said that they had broken sticks on the drums but didn’t break the instrument. They even play the drums with real drumsticks. The Rock Band kit comes with real 5A Drum Sticks.

They were also talking about people that had played the drums a lot are now able to play real drums. Harmonix said that if you play under expert mode it’s the same as the real drummer is playing.

Failing songs will bring down the rest of the band and can easily force the whole band to fail if not restored soon enough. Cooperation and team effort are vital in Rock Band.

The singing part has been improved on from older titles like Karaoke Revolution also. The game can detect pitches and a certain amount of phonetics. It can detect consonants and vowels, so it will have some idea if the player is singing the right words.

In Karaoke Revolution the player could just hum and be fine. The people at Harmonix were talking about that when they testing the game. The singing part in Rock Band doesn’t pay attention to octave, so men can sing woman’s parts and vice-versa.

The microphone doesn’t have controls on it, so it needs a regular system controller to navigate. They didn’t want people pressing the buttons by accident. We had enough trouble in the demo with people hitting the Xbox button on the guitar.

The Band World Tour is Rock Band’s biggest feature. You get together two or more friends to play in a band. Then you can go on a virtual tour. When on tour you earn money and fans depending on how well you play. Some venues will earn you more money or more fans.

It’s really realistic — if you play a charity concert than it will earn you more fans but won’t earn you any money.

The World Tour starts from a hometown that you pick. In your hometown you can play in certain clubs, and as your popularity gets bigger, you can pick bigger venues. The first ones are small dingy clubs, and then it moves to theaters and then hopefully to stadiums if your good enough.

There are over 40 different venues in the game and they are all very different from stone clubs in Germany to old wood carved walls in a Scandinavian club. The clubs are often based on real places.

Harmonix spent money licensing the songs. They got real tattoo artists to design the tattoos, and they got real artists to design the 2D stickers in the game. They decided against getting permission for the real locations. They also felt that real locations would have some negative connotations, if someone doesn’t like that particular club they may be annoyed at playing in it.

As you play through the venues once in a while before one it will pop up with a message saying if you get so many stars on this concert that you can get a tour bus. These messages also usually have a negative side if you fail. One that we saw was that if you finish the concert it would double your money, but if you fail you’ll lose all your money. As a band you then have to decide if the risk is worth the reward.

When the band gets a van they can leave their home city and start branching out to other cities. Eventually they even get a jet, and this allows them to leave the continent and go anywhere in the world.

When playing a concert it often is many songs in a row, unlike in solo play or in regular coop play. When the first song is finished you don’t leave the venue, you start the next song. This means you have to get both or more songs right to do well in the venue. You have to play the set.

When you form a band or play solo, you have to create a character. The characters are very customizable. You can select skin color hairstyle, be tall or short or be skinny or fat. The game even allows customizing the eye color. The player can pick a style for the character, from rock, metal, goth or punk. This will determine how he or she moves on the stage and what special moves they do.

Once the basic person is decided, they can go and get clothes. There are four stores in the game. The interesting thing with the rock shop is it looks like the Garment District in Cambridge, Mass. They admitted they loosely based the style from the Garment District, and the Canal Street Jeans, in New York City. They hired real apparel designers to help design the clothes and make sure that their clothes look authentic.

The special effects in the game are really nice, and the playing heads up display is transparent so you can see the stage very easily. It’s still easy not to pay attention to the stage when you’re playing though cause of concentrating on your part.

I found this game a blast, especially if you can get four people together to play as a band. Don’t give up right away — the drum part is really hard for new players, but even after playing it just one day I found it really fun.

I love this game.

Quick hits:

Publisher: MTV Games
Developer: Harmonix
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PS2
Genre: Music simulation
Players: 1-4
Launch Date: November 20, 2007 (PS3 and Xbox 360), December 11, 2007 (PS2)

Playability: 5 out of 5 stars
Learning Curve: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Sound: 5 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 5 out of 5 stars
Overall: 5 out of 5 stars Editor’s Choice

Elizabeth Raftery, Daniel Peleschuk and John Guilfoil of the Blast Magazine staff contributed to this report.

Harmonix and MTV Games announced today the first wave of of downloadable songs available before the end of the year.

“Beginning on November 20th, fans will be able to purchase 3-song packs from Metallica, The Police and Queens of the Stone Age for a suggested retail price of $5.49 per pack or $1.99 per track (440 Microsoft Points per pack and 160 per track for Xbox 360). Individual tracks from Foreigner, Wolfmother and The Runaways, among others, for $1.99 per track (160 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360).”

“We are excited to unleash some of the most beloved rock songs of all time for consumers to customize their Rock Band game experience — for an amazing price,” said Paul DeGooyer, Senior Vice President of MTV Games. “The overwhelmingly positive response from artists, managers, music publishers and record labels has setup a queue of fantastic tracks that will continue to roll out every week.”

“We are giving consumers a way to experience what is essentially a new game every week with more and more of the songs they love,” said Alex Rigopulos, co-founder and CEO of Harmonix.

Downloads include:

Week of November 20, 2007:

3-Pack for $5.49 or Individual Tracks for $1.99 Each (160 Microsoft Points per track and 440 per pack for Xbox 360)

Metallica Pack
“Ride the Lightning” – Metallica
“Blackened” – Metallica
“And Justice for All” – Metallica

The Police Pack
“Can’t Stand Losing You” – The Police
“Synchronicity II” – The Police
“Roxanne” – The Police

Queens of the Stone Age Pack
“3′s and 7′s” – Queens of the Stone Age
“Little Sister” – Queens of the Stone Age
“Sick Sick Sick” – Queens of the Stone Age

Individual Tracks for $1.99 Each
(160 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360)

“Fortunate Son” as made famous by Creedence Clearwater Revival *
“Juke Box Hero” as made famous by Foreigner *
“Bang a Gong (Get It On)” as made famous by T-Rex *
“My Sharona” as made famous by The Knack *
“Cherry Bomb” as made famous by The Runaways *
“Joker & The Thief” – Wolfmother

Week of November 27, 2007

3-Pack for $5.49 or Individual Tracks for $1.99 Each
(160 Microsoft Points per track and 440 per pack for Xbox 360)

David Bowie Pack
“Moonage Daydream” – David Bowie
“Heroes” as made famous by David Bowie *
“Queen B*tch” as made famous by David Bowie *

Week of December 4, 2007

3-Pack for $5.49 or Individual Tracks for $1.99 Each
(160 Microsoft Points per track and 440 per pack for Xbox 360)

Black Sabbath Pack
“N.I.B.” as made famous by Black Sabbath *
“Sweet Leaf” as made famous by Black Sabbath *
“War Pigs” as made famous by Black Sabbath *

Week of December 11, 2007

3-Pack for $5.49 or Individual Tracks for $1.99 Each
(160 Microsoft Points per track and 440 per pack for Xbox 360)

Punk Pack:
“Rockaway Beach” – Ramones
“I Fought the Law” – The Clash
“Ever Fallen In Love” as made famous by Buzzcocks *

Week of December 18, 2007

Individual Tracks for $1.99 Each
(160 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360)
“My Iron Lung” – Radiohead
“Buddy Holly” – Weezer
“Brass in Pocket” as made famous by Pretenders *

* This is a cover version of a song made famous by the artist indicated. All others are original master recordings.

The highly anticipated video game hits shelves Tuesday, November 20 for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3

Harmonix, MTV Games and distribution partner Electronic Arts released the song list today for its highly anticipated music video game Rock Band.

Rock Band will feature 58 tracks from alternative and classic rock to heavy metal and punk, the companies said in a statement. Rock Band will feature multiple instruments and several single and multiplayer modes, playable online or offline.

“Our goal with Rock Band was to give players the chance to experience an amazing cross section of music from the last four decades, and our final list of tracks includes everything from emerging bands to iconic artists,” said Paul DeGooyer, MTV’s Senior Vice President of Home Entertainment, Music and Games. “The overwhelmingly positive response from artists, music publishers and record labels made the final selection process challenging, but extremely exciting. As a result, 51 out of 58 of the final selections are based on original masters, giving fans an unprecedented way to get closer to the music they love.”

Eric Brosius, Harmonix audio lead said, “Now that the disc track list is locked and Rock Band is being prepped for manufacture, we are working with our music partners to set an exciting download schedule, both for launch and beyond. Through DLC, players will have the ability to take a deeper dive into the music of the artists featured on the Rock Band disc, or further explore different genres of rock or additional bands if they choose.”

The Set List:

There are 45 songs on the main set list and 13 newer songs from up-and-coming artists that can be unlocked.

1960s
Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter”

1970s
Aerosmith “Train Kept a Rollin’”*
The Who “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
Boston “Foreplay/Long Time”
Mountain “Mississippi Queen”*
The Police “Next to You”
David Bowie “Suffragette City”
Black Sabbath “Paranoid”*
Blue Oyster Cult “Don’t Fear the Reaper”
The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop”
Deep Purple “Highway Star”
KISS “Detroit Rock City”
Molly Hatchet “Flirtin’ With Disaster”
The Outlaws “Green Grass & High Tides”*
Sweet “Ballroom Blitz”*

1980s
Rush “Tom Sawyer”*
Bon Jovi “Wanted Dead or Alive”
The Clash “Should I Stay or Should I Go”
Faith No More “Epic”
R.E.M. “Orange Crush”
Iron Maiden “Run to the Hills”*

1990s
Foo Fighters “Learn to Fly”
Metallica “Enter Sandman”
Nirvana “In Bloom”
Stone Temple Pilots “Vasoline”
Weezer “Say It Ain’t So”
Smashing Pumpkins “Cherub Rock”
Radiohead “Creep”
Beastie Boys “Sabotage”
Hole “Celebrity Skin”
Garbage “I Think I’m Paranoid”
Soundgarden “Black Hole Sun”

2000s
The Hives “Main Offender”
Queens of the Stone Age “Go With the Flow”
The Strokes “Reptilia”
Jet “Are You Gonna Be My Girl”
OK Go “Here It Goes Again”
Nine Inch Nails “The Hand That Feeds”
Pixies “Wave of Mutilation”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Maps”
Red Hot Chili Peppers “Dani California”
Coheed & Cambria “Welcome Home”
Fallout Boy “Dead on Arrival”
The Killers “When You Were Young”
New Pornographers “Electric Version”

* Indicates a cover song, all others songs are original master recordings

Rock Band is scheduled for release on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 on November 20 and on PS2 December 18 in North America. It will hit European shelves in early 2008.

Originally announced as November 23, the well-anticipated Rock Band will hit stores November 20, before Thanksgiving and Black Friday, Harmonix announced.

Rock Band picks up where the amazingly popular Guitar Hero games leave off and is expected to sell amazingly well despite the $200 price tag on the special edition. (The game itself is $59.99 but the special edition comes with a guitar, drum set and microphone)

Thre game will allow players to mix lead guitar, bass guitar, drums and vocals in music from legendary and contemporary artists. It’s designed for multiplayer but single players can use a career mode or compete online against other players. There is also a plethora of downloadable content planned, as well as a social networking site at Rockband.com, launching the same day as the game.