Lazy port? Ok, but who really wants online play for Rock Band? It kind of defeats the purpose of a Rock Band. I understand online play for others games but not Rock Band, really...maybe that's just me...I've yet to use it with my copy.

I think people should just give up on this hard drive idea because Nintendo doesn't seem to care. Maybe if they release Pikmin or Animal Crossing MMO bundled with a hard drive they'd do it, because they only bundle new peripherals.

SD cards are more expensive than cheap hard drives, don't hold the space I need for stuff on my PS3 (including Rock Band), and the transfer rates using the Wii and an SD card are horrible. I can't imagine trading out files to play different songs (which would ikely require exiting the game).

You can buy 2GB SD cards on special for (about) $5, that's pretty cheap if you ask me; on a per-gigabyte basis it is half the cost of the 20GB XBox 360 hard-drive. On top of that SD cards have always had much higher transfer rates than DVD discs so I doubt that it would be any slower to transfer the songs from SD than from the original disc.

Basically, since Rock Band for the Wii was announced they have said that it was going to be (pretty much) exactly the same game that was released for the PS2; the truth is they can do everything they say they can't they just won't because (like all EA developers) the quality of the product they release is no longer important.

windbane - Go on Youtube and type "Rock Band" in, and see how many online supergroups record and play videos. There are quite a few.

Theonestarr - Nintendo was NOT some sort of "small company" that suddenly came into it's own due to the Wii/DS, and somehow had to come up with all of this money for online networks, and the like. Nintendo has been in the business longer than Sony, longer than MS, longer than just about anyone still making games, yet is the LAST company to give you ANYTHING when it comes to online play. Why is that?

Nintendo has made hundreds of millions of dollars PER YEAR for the past 10+ years. It's not a lack of money, folks. It's a lack of desire on Nintendo's part to intergrate something "foreign" that someone else did first, and better, quickly into their system: just like Optical-Standard media of the CD and DVD (N64 and GC ring a bell?) for consoles. Nintendo doesn't want to change, unless it's by their own desire. And that's bad, because you'll never get the best of both worlds.

And for the HDD added cost, and such: how much do you think a 4gb SD card would cost Nintendo to add to the Wii, as opposed to the 512mb SD card? $5? $10? Nintendo makes lots of cash off of each Wii sold, why not throw the consumers a bone and give them a bigger SD card? After all, you're going to easily make your money back, from the added DLC and VC/WiiWare games the consumers would download with a bigger SD Card.

I know I never post on the Nintendo forums much (as I don't want to troll), but Nintendo is online and hard-drive incompetent. You can justify it all you want, but when the PS3 and X360 are doing both rather easily, without issues (and PSN doing it free), it shows you how far behind Nintendo is. They could easily decide to devote a portion of the millions of dollars a day they make into upgrading their online infrastructure and hardware components, but choose not to. And why are you trying to defend that?

sd cards are big enough

You can't make the claim that there are no issues with online ...

I own an XBox 360 and have canceled my XBox Live subscription because I am tired of the crap 13 year-olds say, and that when you get into a pretty good match with someone who isn't an idiot and start to win they (suddenly) have to leave. Nintendo's online has a lot of problems, and they may be more annoying to you than XBox Live's problems but that doesn't mean that XBox Live is problem free.

I'm so tired of the 13 year old excuse.

I've played close to six hundred matches on Halo 3, and the only time you come across them is when you're not playing ranked games, same goes for CoD4.  Same with RSV2.  9/10 times, I don't encounter anyone like that.  Maybe you're living under a bad tree or something, but I have no clue what you're talking about.  That excuse is so tired.  And to go even further, NINTENDO DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A HEADSET, so how can you hear an annoying 13 year old?  

@ Mrstickballs post

Win.

 Did I say they were a small company? Hmm? I'm pretty sure that I did not.

I said they were much smaller than they are now. That rapid growth means a LOT of adapting and new hires that they have to deal with, and that takes quite a bit of adjustment and restructuring. Just because one makes money doesn't mean that money is free to do what one wants with it. There are costs of operation, costs of development, costs of employment, costs of manufacturing, costs of this, costs of that. Sony and Microsoft are both much larger companies withmuch larger budgets and they can afford to rush things a lot more.

 You remember what happened the last time a gaming-only company tried rushing things? They fell apart and had to drop out of the console race entirely, after two decades of activity in the industry, and now they're in a situation that they could get bought out someday by a larger gaming company. I think we all know exactly who I'm talking about. Nintendo is doing everything they can to NOT be the next SEGA.

Think about the situation in its entirety for once, eh?

Is there any evidence that the Wii is allowing DLC to be booted straight off an SD card? This is a real question as I seriously don't know. The only thing that has booted off my SD card are photos and saves. I heard games and game content need to be loaded back onto the 512MB of memory before it could be of use, which sort of ruins the idea of having the SD cards in the first place. Anyone have an answer to this?

The Wii is capable of reading data straight off of an SD card during gameplay. Recall Excite Truck? You're able to select songs - on your SD card - to play while you're racing.

Thus said, the Wii is capable of using DLC straight from the card. It may require a minor firmware update to make it optimally practical, but it's definitely doable.

Yeah, and I got a free 2GB usb key from work, but that's not the normal price. Way to go comparing the cost to the most expensive hard drive in the world, the 20GB 360 HD. But the main point isn't the cost, it's just that Nintendo isn't going to do it. I already have an SD card and most peope do for cameras, but 2GB is not enough for DLC for all the games I have. I have 3 demos that are more than 2GB. I do not want to manage with that little space. 4GB sticks cost even more. Hard drives are much cheaper. As for transfer rates...it's not the SD card, it's the freaking Nintendo Wii. It's the slowest transfer I've ever seen. I use it to transfer tiny save files and it annoys me. Luckily I don't buy their over-priced VC games because I know there are people that have to trade those out using an SD card and that must suck. I just don't think Nintendo is going to bother. Their demographic doesn't care.