Wii version of Rock Band 2 to rival PS3, Xbox 360

15.10.2008
Wish your Wii could download all those fancy Rock Band songs that PS3 and Xbox 360 owners have been enjoying for a full year? You'll soon be able to, reports , because MTV Games will offer every song available on the Rock Band store to Wii owners with the release of Rock Band 2. This includes the same store as PS3 and 360 versions, replete with a preview of the audio and album art.

Regarding online multiplayer, IGN says the Wii version of Rock Band 2 will match all online play modes of PS3 and 360 versions, including band or instrument head-to-head competitions, and online world tour modes where up to four players can play together from different locations. There are also leader boards and stat tracking, just like the high-definition versions of the game.

Due to limited storage space, however, Wii owners will have to work a little harder to play downloadable content. Sadly, there is no song import feature from Rock Band 1 to Rock Band 2, like PS3 and 360 versions. And while purchased songs may be stored on SD memory cards, users must first move them from an SD card to the 512 MB internal memory before playing.

This differs slightly from the upcoming for Wii, which seamlessly loads downloaded songs (one at a time) from SD cards to internal memory for playback. World Tour, out October 26 on Wii, also features a full music store and online multiplayer, in addition to a song creation mode.

Rock Band 2 is available now on Xbox 360. The game launches on PS3 October 19, and on both Wii and PS2 on November 18. Unlike Wii, 360, and PS3 versions of the game, however, the PS2 version does not support song downloads or online multiplayer.