I'm someone that likes to listen to a bit of music but I also like to play it as well (on real instruments). I play on the piano and I have some experience on the guitar. No matter how you spin it, even musicians like to play video games too...even games that TRY to mimic their real counterparts. Just ask some of my friends and myself. That being said, I've been playing rhythm games since Parappa, Drumbeat, Frequency and pretty much everything else. I even remember playing an imported version of GuitarFreaks at the local arcade. It felt sloppy. Yet nothing really caught my eye until Guitar Hero came along. Like GuitarFreaks, it seemed hammy watching others play. When I actually played it myself, I ended up buying it for my PS2. Guitar Hero 2 comes along and I bought that too. It was great since I didn't have to buy new peripherals. Everything seemed fine until Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band came along. As an early adopter of the 360, I had a choice between Guitar Hero III (GH3) and Rock Band (RB). Fortunately, I had friends who owned those games. For a few weeks, my friends and I rocked on GH3 until we played Rock Band. Of course, this is nothing like playing on real drums and real guitars but the experience was undeniably different and much more entertaining. It was a chance for non-musicians and musicians to come together and just have fun pretending to do cover songs. We ended up dropping GH3 and stuck with Rock Band. A few of my friends still play GH3 and some have even downloaded new tracks. The majority of my friends played Rock Band more than GH3. Eventually, everyone dropped GH3 and played only Rock Band exclusively.

Now we have Guitar Hero World Tour (GHWT) and Rock Band 2 (RB2) coming up. I've heard and read about GHWT's music creator but I have also heard that all of the downloaded GH3 tracks will NOT work on GHWT. Neversoft knows it's not technically feasible or resourceful to have the downloadable tracks to include different instruments - not to mention different difficulty levels of each of those instruments.

I myself have downloaded ALL of the latest tracks for RB. Friends bought the peripherals, I buy the tracks. My friends and I knew Harmonix is not stupid enough to release a sequel to kill their own library of downloaded tracks. That wouldn't make sense. Who would download new tracks if Harmonix announced that RB1 tracks will not be compatible with RB2. However, with GHWT, it seems like the franchise has to start all over. My friends and I knew that not everyone has disposable income. A new set of peripherals? More tracks to download? We also know that we don't have time to create music and share it - much less test it and make sure it sounds good. In fact, the music creator doesn't even include a vocal track - a HUGE downside! I'm sure that the music creator will be easy to use to make beats and guitar solos but this misses the whole point of rhythm gaming entirely. While Neversoft is concentrating on making new costumes, boss fights, neat accessories, and music creators, the rest of the casual gaming community may not care. Unless of course, this casual group of people has NEVER played Rock Band or Guitar Hero. Neversoft is banking on leveraging the Guitar Hero brand but I anticipate a huge uphill battle. For people that actually play these kinds of games, are people willing to just drop Rock Band (or GH3), its (downladable content) DLCs and just pony up the funds on World Tour? How much are these peripherals going to be and how much are the DLCs going to cost? And what about those new to rhythm gaming? Isn't it likely that these people will come across friends (with similar gaming interests) who've already played Rock Band?

Seriously, the genre is going to get crowded with a ton of neat features and the like but ultimately, it's going to come down to who has the strongest and largest library of music. There is still a ton of people out there that just don't care for games in general and just want to sing and pretend to play in a band with friends. If you have a limited library of music, that experience dies rather quickly. Harmonix knows this and they're playing it safe - keeping your DLCs intact, improved peripherals that are not required, creating setlists, etc. There are even people out there who are making money doing mods on Rock Band peripherals such as double pedals or realistic drums sets. It sounds crazy but Harmonix knows these people are out there and they are encouraging it by keeping the peripherals interchangeable. As of this writing, RB has 200+ songs and counting. When RB2 debutes, they will have 80+ songs to add to this library. I have yet to see if RB1's on-disc songs will transition over or will just be included in RB2's list.

Now if Guitar Hero World Tour were to have debuted before Rock Band, this would be a totally different story. Just replace the words RB with GHWT on this blog. Harmonix is lucky to have the timing they had with Rock Band. GHWT has a huge uphill battle to face when it finally debuts but RB2 will have a major edge on two things: A strong current library and a huge fanbase. Battle of the Bands is also a great concept which keeps things easy to understand and fun. Create a setlist and let a party of friends battle it out to see which band can get a higher score based on the agreed setlist. Imagine a party scenario where your band needs to break a million points to beat the other team. You're down by a slew of points. It seems doable but the next song is unfamiliar to vocalist. It creates an entertaining situation that entices onlookers to become active participants. It sounds easy, fun and very promising.

To counter RB2's current and future library of songs, Neversoft is hoping that their music creator will even the playing field by sharing created content with other GHWT users. GHWT will have their own iTunes like library by calling it GH-Tunes - an area where people will rate the highest ranking songs. This sounds great on paper but how does this translate to fun in the real world? How will you moderate 100 versions of "Hotel California" and 2 versions of "My Sharona". Neversoft hopes to alleviate this situation through Showcases - a list of the best user works alongside new songs from popular artists. Of course, Neversoft, like everyone else, has different tastes in music.

According to IGN's assessment of the music creator, "If you manage to create a nearly impossible song, you won't have to worry about that limiting your audience. The exact notes you played will be set to the hardest difficulty and the game will auto-generate note patterns for the easier settings so that everyone can enjoy (or hate) your work". If this is true, will the editor allow users to edit the auto-generated notes? If not, this can make the game feel unnatural, especially if some key notes are missing from the chorus of a song. What's it like playing as a band with these user created songs? How does band scoring work if there are no vocals recorded? All these questions and so little answers.

Based on what I've read, there is one huge advantage I see on GHWT, particularly on the Wii.
According to GameDaily: "Wii users will be able to store downloaded songs on either the Wii's internal memory or on an SD Card in a 'Rock Archive', and then will be able to create playlists from this".

Currently, Rock Band does not support DLC on the Wii and to have the ability for someone to bring an SD card around with World Tour DLCs and just start playing is a pretty big advantage over Wii's Rock Band. If RB2 doesn't address this, we can potentially see GHWT do some damage on the Wii charts and RB2 dominating 360 and PS3. At least that's my prediction.

So which sequel do I favor based on the given specs of both these games? I would lean towards Rock Band 2. No disrespect to Guitar Hero and its future sequel. I used to own a few of the GH games myself. Irregardless of game's name, I would be going after the game that has the biggest/strongest library and is accessible to people who normally don't play games. Guitar Hero World Tour looks to be a good game but for a different kind of gamer altogether. It's still unclear to me how the music creator and the DLCs will payoff for people that plan to purchase GHWT. GHWT's 85 songs is not going to cut it if the original Rock Band is churning out DLCs before the sequel. Good user content is based entirely on the users that make them. The fact that these would-be music producers will not be able to get ahold of these tools until the game debuts doesn't help either. Before you know it, we may see three times the number of songs on Rock Band 2 vs. World Tour. I know there are people out there that will own both GHWT and RB2. I know a few of those people personally but even if I had all had disposable income I still want some value and less risk. Current owners of Rock Band will have an easier time with their purchasing decisions, myself included. Thanks for reading.