Why is this a big issue with some people, I mean who in the hell really cares? The real winner in my opinion is who gets the best games and I see stuff like Resident Evil 5, Grand Theft Auto 4, Fallout 3, Alpha Protocol, Borderlands, Prototype, etc and I think that says a lot, especially for hardcore gamers.

If you think victory is getting a gimped version of Rock Band and counting how much money it makes then by all means celebrate your victory. I'll celebrate mine as a gamer by playing the biggest third party games out there of which there seems to be a lot of for 2008 and beyond. Have your "casual" victory, I really doubt hardcore gamers on the 360 care since I doubt they really want to play games like Carnival Games, Cooking Mama, Pet Dogz, etc anyways.

1) You say Wii DLC is "possible" but let's deal with reality instead of theory: The Wii has been out for almost 19 months, so what current Wii games have 100+ MB DLC available? That's the size of a weekly song pack. DLC is commonplace on 360 and PS3 (I couldn't even list it all), how much Wii DLC is there? I own a Wii, can you please tell me where I can buy downloadable content for my Wii games because I don't see that option in the main menu....

2) You're right, in your case you should pay $150-170 (170 is MSRP from IGN) for a severely gimped seven month old game. Others may see additional value in a 360 (many highly rated games) or PS3 (Bluray player), or may not have a current-gen console yet.

Consumers who want Rock Band are paying $150-170 (same price for Wii and 360/PS3), along with $250-300 for a console, plus $60 or so for a second guitar, and maybe $50 for additional songs (that would be 25-30 songs) over the life of the product... well, that's getting in the $450 to $500 range. And that's if they don't spend additional money on a drum throne, drum noise reduction pads, bass pedal reinforcement, or other extras.

The point is, educated consumers paying that kind of money would probably be willing to pay $40 extra (the difference in price between the Wii and 360 Pro consoles) on the non-gimped version of a game they were investing so much time and money in, when there's not a single known advantage to the Wii version, only a list of missing features and a seven month late release date.

Exactly. 

This assumes people will pay $170 for a gimped not-yet-released game on a $250 console... because they can't afford to pay $170 for it on a $290 console?

And as stated above, the expense with a second guitar and DLC is well over $200.

Well so far what we know of higher priced games selling on the Wii is Wii Fit's sales in Japan and Guitar Hero 3's sales in the America. Both of them are closing in on the 2 million sales mark just in those individual territories. Guitar Hero 3 on the Wii has actually been the best selling version of the game the last few months, inspite of it's so called limitations. Higher priced games can certainly sell on the Wii. I'm not sure how well Rock Band does on the Wii, but it won't bomb, that's for sure.

You can also look at it the other way: You spent less on the console therefore have more money to spend on games you want to have.

Let's not kid ourselves - there are plenty of people who only have a Wii and no other console. If they want this game, they'll buy it.

I reckon rock band wii will do well but nothing to write home about. Now Wii Fit and Mario Kart will do really well. I think the 360's revenue argument will go sometime this year.

I think it's likely that Rock Band won't do as well as the PS3/360 versions, but it should do better than the PS2 version. Probably 500k by the end of the year. Now they probably won't do DLC or any of that stuff, but I don't think that'll effect the majority of Wii owners, since there are fewer Wii owners online then there are 360 owners, and probably PS3 owners. I don't think that they'll release a disc of more songs for the Wii version, because I just don't think people will buy it.

With Rock Band 2, I could see the Wii version doing a lot better, and though maybe not beating the 360 version, it'll probably hands down beat the PS3 version, and it'll include all the features like online play and such, and it'll probably also have DLC since Nintendo will finally have a solution to the storage problems and such.

@Sinha: So, let's see:

1. How many gamers are "educated gamers"? Especially in the casual group, where Rockband is targeted at. Besides, if you're an "educated gamer", you're propably not going to get 360 anyway.

2. Why would DLC for Wii have 30MB size per song?

3. The not-free DLC feature for Wii have just recently been announced. That's propably why you haven't seen any "extras".

4. I was talking about the existing userbase, who doesn't have a reason to get another console to play a "not gimped" game. Not the group that doesn't own any console, to who getting 360 just to play Rockband is a no-brainer, since 360 is 20% cheaper than Wii.

5. Look at Guitar Hero, how did the gimped Wii version do? Did Guitar Hero stop selling because it's gimped Rockband?

6. The topic was about revenue, not "will Wii Rockband outsell 360 Rockband".

7. Is charging same for a gimped version that the not-gimped version is charged a ripoff? Yes, it is. Will it matter to sales? No, it won't.

Wow.

I personally don't care about revenue. I think its a dumb stat because it just reflects price. But I think its funny to watch the evolution of defenses of the XBox business. As a business, it has failed, and revenue numbers are just spin.

Going to the "why do you care defense?" is lame. As a gamer, I don't care. I'll play what I like. As an industry observer, its fun to debunk spin, and funner to predict when spin will change in the future.

Talking about "casual victories" or game quality or condescendingly repeating my first name or saying that anyone who buys RB Wii is a "fanboy" or "stupid" is all garbage. It has nothing to do with anything.

Now, if you want to make the argument that RB Wii won't sell well, go ahead. I personally think the core of the experience is partying with friends, and that experience will sell on Wii, and contribute greatly to revenue.