Ah, usually happens when the crowd meter is maxed out or about to be maxed out. Can hear them much better actually playing the song as opposed to watching a video of it.

So Europe finally gets a release date and price - well, for the 360 version anyways - and it's not pretty. As I would have guessed, though really hoped wouldn't be the case, Europe gets royally fucked:

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EA: Please, kindly, with all due respect, go fuck yourselves raw and then don't bother stopping until you die horribly bloody deaths. Thank you.

As much as I want this game, I flat out refuse to buy it until it's a reasonable price. I'm not waiting 6 months for a game only to be over-charged in such a bullshit manner.

It's not as if they haven't already damaged the game's chances of selling here enough, but this finally kills it.

There's no reason that American peripherals wouldn't work over here is there? It'd probably be a fuck load cheaper to buy the PAL game here and import all the bits and bobs to go with it. Exchange rates being what they are, I imagine the saving would more than pay for the shipping.

That is, essentially fucking gay though. Given that the UK is third in the world in terms of video game producing revenue, it'd be nice if we didn't get completely shafted once in a while. If only we made as much hardware as we do software eh?

Hahaha holy shit. That's like $400 here for the whole combination fried plastic toy rice. The same price as a 360 (arcade) or a Wii. What the hell, EA.

.. Or 200 copies of Big Mutha Truckers.

You can import the PlayStation 3 version, as that will work. The 360 one, not so much, given the 360 features region locked games (I'm pretty sure I read someone saying they tried to import Rock Band 360 with no success).

The thing is, there's next to no argument about the hardware manufacturing, because I'd be willing to bet these things are plastered with 'Made in China' labels. Even so, the cost of shipping over here doesn't justify a doubling in price.

As Q said, this pretty much kills it as a brand in Europe. Some retards will still buy it, and if it drops enough in price I'll consider it, but just out of principle EA can take a running jump.

Wow, did the pound almost half in value overnight? Chalk me up as someone not willing to pay the price.

Omagnus, you should be able to just buy the stand alone game and the stand alone drum kit if that is available over there, since the Guitar Hero guitars work fine for Rock Band (or at least, the bundled guitar from GH3 on 360 does). That of course doesn't make the pricing any less silly, but for people like you who already have Guitar Hero, you may catch a break.

Don't care. I'm not paying £120 for the drums and game when that's at the top-end of what I was willing to pay for the whole kit and caboodle. It's just a joke, plain and simple. I'm going to actively dissuade anyone who was considering this from getting it now.

No reason at all. Importing the peripherals is a great idea. In fact, the saving might well even pay for an American PS2. They aren't exactly expensive right now. That way you don't need to buy the PAL release at all, and whoever decided on this insane price can get stuffed.

Oh... wait... this game isn't coming out for PS2? Forget I suggested that. The peripherals for 360 will work fine no matter which region they origina te from. I'm certain of that. I apologise for getting confused over that. I'm only marginally interested in the release...

So you're saying a, say, US bought Ace Combat 6 flight stick would work here.. Interesting ::chinstroking::

I wonder if the PAL version of the game will recognize it.

Although I'm quite certain that it would work, I have no actual direct proof. I just thought I'd say that. What I do have is past experience of all kinds of imported peripherals working with PAL consoles. There usually isn't even the slightest difference between peripherals from different regions.

I have both Japanese and American peripherals for several of my older consoles. but I must admit that I've not actually been using anything imported on my 360 yet. I've just not had it long enough. I've used an imported arcade stick controller on my PS3 though, which goes to show that the current generation consoles don't have to be any different.

As for whether the game will recognise it... that depends. If they just released the American version in Europe with the only change being the regional coding and some additional languages... then yes it would. I'm confident in stating that controllers, no matter how unusual, aren't region coded. Ever.

On the other hand, it's possible that when they mastered the European version they took out the code for the stick. I can't imagine why they would do that... but it is not impossible that they did.

The AC6 controller is a sweet piece of equipment, I grant you. I'm confident you'll be successful, but the tiny chance that it won't work does exist. It wouldn't be fair to pretend I've actually tried anything on the 360. I just know that as a general case, peripherals don't care where they are from.

Good luck finding one for less than the cost of Rock Band.

Speaking of deep-dickings for people who want the game, it seems that the Wii version is a ported PS2 version without DLC, without online, without world tour mode, and Harmonix says its Activision's problem if the GH3 guitar doesn't work with it, as theirs is "open source." Oh, by the way, it costs the same as the PS3 and 360 versions.

Fuck you Harmonix for being lazy.

I can't see that they'd bother adding region-locking to peripherals although I guess for something that has different functions, rather than just using the same button mapping in a different format (Like an arcade stick) there'd be a possibility that they took the support for it out of the PAL version if they never intended to release the peripheral here.

I wonder when they will release a fucking asian version, I swear to god i've wasted 100 dollars on this shit last month, i got myself the drum and guitar and the game, sadly the game doesn't work because Its region locked =p.

That would be entirely pointless. What a lot of people seem to not realise is that removing things from software can be just as costly as trying to add something to it (and potentially more dangerous). They just didn't see a market for the stick over here, with likely pricing and feasbility of it selling, etc.

As for Rock Band, they have no real argument because their tax/shipping bullshit falls apart as soon as you compare the price of guitar+game to Guitar Hero 3, which is a wireless guitar and game. Roughly the same size, I imagine similar weights, similar packaging sizes, etc. There was a rumour of a European price retraction/drop, though that hasn't happened and I don't see it happening. They've dug their heels in too much to budge now and lose face. Evidently they'd rather lose sales.

As a final kick in the teeth to Europe, EA and Harmonix are releasing the 'exclusive' European tracks as DLC this week, the same week as the European release. So the US will actually get the 'exclusive' tracks before the game hits over here.

I return to my original stance: EA can go fuck themselves. Never before has my excitement and interest in a title gone from so high to non-existent, so well done to all the clever marketing and sales people responsible for this.

Yeah man, I cannot wait until tomorrow when I can download Hysteria. Been waiting for this song since the day I got Rock Band.

Well, I downloaded and played Hysteria during my lunch break this afternoon and goddamn is that song tough on Expert guitar and bass. There are a lot of hammer ons, and quite frankly, the Rock Band guitar is not very responsive, which makes long strings of hammer ons borderline impossible to keep going, at least for me.

Rock Band comin to Japanland
And can't wait to download some Margaritaville this week.

cant wait to see the low as hell sales numbers.

Having got to play this out in the US, annoying I do want to pick it up. I still refuse to pay crazy moneys for it though, and there's no way I'm splashing out on the full pack. For now I'm thinking I might, at the very least, pick up the game solus, since I have two guitars and technically a mic. If I can get a good game + drums deal, then I might give that a go. I venture forth after work today to see what I can get.

As for the Japanese release, this should be interesting. I wonder if any songs will be available as DLC, because that would be rather cool (and not out of line on the singing front, given they've lumped French and German songs on the Euro release, so if you're playing the UK version you might have to sing one of those songs in the random set lists).

Yeah, I figured that after playing it you would want to pick it up. When you pick it up, you, Iwata, and I need to get together for some online band play. It will be awesome.

I have it now (the full kit and caboodle), so yeah, I'm game for an online session at some point, for sure.