14 DAY TRIAL // Rock Band is a really great game because it brought a lot of new features to the music game genre. In addition to the guitar playing mode, gamers got the chance to play the drums and to test their vocal skills, modes that weren't available in any other music game.
Harmonix, the developer of the title, tried to give players the best experience around by offering a lot of DLC (Downloadable Content) in the form of track packs or various albums from popular bands. The development team always tried to bring a music experience unlike any other music game on the market, and to beat the main rival, Guitar Hero.
Although Rock Band gained a lot of fans in the United States, other territories weren't so keen on the music game largely due to the fact that it was launched extremely late as opposed to North America. Because Europeans or Australians got their hands on Rock Band almost a year later, you can probably guess why the game isn't so popular there.
But things are starting to change, says Harmonix, through the voice of the lead designer for Rock Band, Dan Teasdale. He goes on saying that it was for the first time when the publisher of the game, MTV, made a worldwide release and things didn't go so smoothly. But now it seems like everything is in place and we can see more and more content for other territories than North America.
"I'm really sad that it turned out that way because it's an amazing game, and to have the various delays that we've had and having to sort out licensing in various territories is a massive pain. But the good news is that we've sorted that out now. It was our first time as MTV Games going in and making those connections, but now that those connections are made we can reduce the time per title, so for Rock Band 2 it's a two-month delay, which isn't great, but it's in the realm of acceptability. We've got our DLC platform working across all territories now so we're releasing new songs every week, day and date with the US release, and I think from this point on you'll see the gap closing closer and closer to the US release."
It's really nice to hear that developers are trying to do everything they can to ensure a short period between releases so that everyone can enjoy these games at the same time. Let's just hope that the waiting period gets smaller and smaller.