Hi there, PlayStation fans!
My name is Dan Teasdale. I’m DeliciousBees on the PlayStation Network, but more importantly I’m also the Lead Designer on Rock Band 2!
We’re perfectionists over here at Harmonix, and we want to make sure that everyone’s Rock Band experiences are as awesome as they possibly can be. With that in mind, I’m proud to announce that the Rock Band team has finalized a software update for Rock Band 2 on the PlayStation 3 that addresses some common feature requests from our fans. We’ve also added some great new functionality that we think you’ll be excited to try out when the software update arrives this Thursday.
This update wouldn’t be possible without the feedback and suggestions that we receive from everyone in both the Rock Band and PlayStation communities. Everybody here at Harmonix takes your forum posts and suggestions to heart, and we wouldn’t be able to make our games as awesome as they are without all of the feature requests and feedback that we get from you on a daily basis. So from all of us here at Harmonix, thank you, and please keep letting us know what you’d like to see in future updates and games!
This update includes:
- “Sort by Stars” in Quickplay. If you hit the “Sort” button on the Song Select screen, you’ll come to a brand new sort that orders songs by the star ratings that you’ve achieved on each song. Each star rating gets a category, as well as an “Unplayed” category for songs that don’t have a star rating recorded. Finally, you can record your progress towards gold starring every song in your library!
- Improved “Sort by Stars” fix: Players will not have to beat a previous high score to record a star rating for their songs.
- Chord HOPO improvements: If you’ve played The Beatles: Rock Band, you’ll notice much more robust handling of chord hammer-ons and pull-offs. This patch implements those changes in Rock Band 2 to provide a more natural chord hammer-on/pull-off experience.
- Velocity Sensitivity on Ion Drum Kits: Ion Drum kits now support velocity sensitivity in both drum fills and Drum Freestyle mode.
- Rock Band Network Store Support: When the Rock Band Network goes live, select songs will be available for PlayStation 3 users through a new storefront available in game. Stay tuned for more information closer to the launch of RBN!
- SingStar Wireless Microphone Support. Rock Band 2 now supports the SingStar Wireless Microphones currently available through Europe! Finally, you can now have a fully wireless Rock Band experience on your PlayStation 3!
We’re extremely happy to be able to finally release this update for the PlayStation 3 version of Rock Band 2. We know many of you are rabid PlayStation rockers, and it’s a priority for us to make sure that everyone gets the best experience playing Rock Band. On behalf of everyone here at Harmonix, we hope you enjoy the new features!
Rock,
-DanT
Well if this doesn’t beat all! Posting a PSblog spouting “We’re perfectionists”, when the mentioned patch includes no PS3 fixes for game breaking bugs! Seriously?
Well, DeliciousBees, one has to wonder if this patch for a year old game would even exist if it wasn’t for your revenue generating new store front included in it. Judging from your response @16 and @36, this blog and patch is nothing more than a new marketing avenue for your new Microsoft Network.
“Rest assured, there’s no platform bias here on our end. We want everybody to be able to rock regardless of platform, and it doesn’t really benefit us to shortchange anybody.”
Then please explain the timed release of RB2, the exclusive content, promotions, etc. tied to the xbox. “Rest assured” we can see through this veiled attempt to assure us there’s “no platform bias here on your end”. Thanks for the giggles!
Finally! I was getting worried with all the new Rock Bands good ol’ Rock Band 2 was forgotten. Thanks for the update!
Thanks so much! All updates are appreciated. I know that time, thought, and effort are put into updates.
I was wondering if it is possible to implement an option to display a song length indicator on the HUD. It would be great to know how long a song is before selecting it, and it would also be helpful to see how much time is remaining in a song while playing it.
I hope this small feature will be added someday.
Thanks again!
D
@100 – Even if they tested it out across every possible PS3 version – they still wouldn’t be able to know what would happen to every single person.
They won’t know about some serious problems until after it comes out and they get actual feedback from the users.
Just because you make toast perfectly in your toaster at home, doesn’t mean it’ll be the same when you start making it on thousands of different ones.
Somethings bound to go wrong. All we can do is alert them to the problem, and hope it gets fixed soon.
I would really like the beatles rockband and greenday rockband to be able to putthose songs onto rockband 3 like u can put rockband 1 songs on 2 via export key
“Velocity Sensitivity on Ion Drum Kits: Ion Drum kits now support velocity sensitivity in both drum fills and Drum Freestyle mode.”
just leaves the guitar hero drums ^^’
@84 Great request. I second the Bluetooth guitars request.
I just got the update today. The highways seemed really “jittery”; anybody else have this problem? Love the game – disappointed with this problem.
I’m excited about this update (I know it already came, but I don’t own RB2, but I’m planning to get it next month), but is it true that only select songs will be avaliable for PS3?
Well, I hope you guys fix the online chat soon, because ever since I got the game, its been annoying! I mean, what’s the point of having a bluetooth headset when you hear it from the TV? And it will be a really cool experience if you guys add bluetooth headsets as microphones. I did it before, but it doesn’t pick up that well. But thanks for this update though. This is awesome!
Thanks for the update, glad to see the sort by Stars ranking. Unfortunately all my rankings were reset, so now it shows all my songs as “unplayed”. Which is funny because some of the “unplayed” still have scores next to them. The majority of the songs are missing their star ranking and their scores. What happened? Are they lost forever?
I realize they can’t account for every possible issue when it comes to these things, but for an update to screw up this badly for so many people. This is hardly an isolated case and the fact that it is an issue with the update not even making to install or even download. Sounds as if there was not a whole heck of a lot of testing that went into this one. I certainly hope it gets fixed sometime soon though as i was in fact planning on playing the damn game, crazy as that might sound.
Well I had to try it 5 or 6 times, but it finally worked. I really hope this is an issue I don’t have to see again. That being said I do really appreciate the hard work that goes into these updates.
Where is the match maker ranked game match? xbox live has a service that gives you a random song and random player of your ranking and puts you against each other in score duel. if you added that feature aswell as server game progress storage so you don’t have to start over everytime you get a new ps3 or have to wipe your harddrive. Backing up doesnt work because your rockband saved file is copy right protected.. either make it unprotected or have some way to back up ur progress
Dude, WTF? Everytime I try to play RB2, it says there is an update and then it just reboots without updating?! Anyone know how to fix this garbage update so I can at least play the game that I bought? *PISSED OFF*
@115
you can still play the game without updating.
When you start the game it says there is an update, you can press the “o”(circle) button not to update and go to the game.
@155 etc…try logging in to the PSN before downloading the patch.
Thanks Harmonix for the Singstar wireless mike patch. I don’t see what the drama is with importing them from Europe, there’s a tonne of reputable UK stores that I buy PS3 games and peripherals from regularly (more often than not paying less than half of Aussie retail). If you want the wireless mikes that badly, get over your xenophobia and import the bloody things.
Think about your poor cousins Down Under – we need to import RB2 from the USA or UK because they haven’t released the game in Australia yet…it’s only been out for over a year! Fortunately we’re in the same DLC region as the UK – we also need to buy the RB1 export key from the UK PSN store because we can’t get that here either :(
I don’t know if this was a cruel coincidence but once I downloaded v1.02 my wireless guitar and drums that I bought a few months ago as part of the RB2 bundle will not sync up with my PS3. They both worked perfectly fine before the software update. Has anyone else seen this issue?
@ 118 – make sure the guitar / drums are registering in the controller 1-4 range.
@119 – they are not registering with my system at all. The lights on the drums and guitar just flash and it does not connect
I am unable to update. It gets to 6% then it stalls and disconnects me from the PSN. I have been trying for a few weeks now….
I’m not able to access the music store thru the RB game now! Once I get to the menu listing new songs, track packs etc it won’t respond to the controller; in fact, I get a hard freeze on the PS3 and have to use the switch at the back to turn it off and on again (haven’t had a bug like this since Fallout 3 – Hiss!! Boo!!) I can still get into the music store through the Playstation Store, but that is such an inferior option
that I don’t like using it – can’t preview the songs the way you can when you go in thru the game. This is REALLY bugging me – I’m a big fan of DLC, but a LOT of it – have over 350 songs and would love to buy more BUT I CAN’T!!!!! Anybody else have this problem? Can anyone offer any suggestions?????
BTW my previous post about ‘jittery’ highways – just got a new front projection system with 92″ screen – PS3 couldn’t handle all the ‘busyness’ in 1080p on a screen that size (was fine with previous 64″ screen) but is fine now at 1080i – so not the update’s fault – my apologies!!!
“We’re perfectionists over here at Harmonix”
– In game leaderboards now completely not working.
– Voice chat still broken.
– Shaky arrow still exists.
– Ion velocity broken.
Perfectionists at what? Why so quiet Dannyboy? As lead designer, maybe you should get back to designing. Communication clearly isn’t your strong suit, but then, neither is fixing a broken game. Kinda hard to get a hand back in our pockets with your new store, on a broken game. Even more difficult when you have both of them in Microsoft’s pocket. Spiraling downward… I wonder why. Thanks for the blog, I think it went over well.
Heres a question. My other acct was banned for my name, which was not a bad name nor racial of any sorts. I spent money on ps home and bought games out of the ps store wheres my money at that I spent under that name????? Or is tthis how playstation makes tgere extra money?????
This is all great stuff, but the one thing that really needs to get fixed is the amount of reverb on the microphone. Put in a knob or something to turn that down so I don’t feel like I’m in a subway tunnel every time I use overdrive.
I’d prefer to be able to turn it off, and just hear the mic input as is. I don’t like even the normal amount of reverb. It’s far too much. (This has been talked about ad nauseum on the forums)