Yes, this warrants a new thread. The old thread is mostly talk of how to play; I created this for news/updates on specifically Wii. I know that more than a couple people have expressed interest. Anyway, here's the news release, cliffs notes at bottom:

Cliffs notes: The game is going to be very similar to the PS2 version rather than the PS3/360 versions. This means no online play at all, no downloadable content (DLC), no character customization, no World Tour mode. For $170 you get a guitar, drums and a mic, none of which will use Wiimotes. The guitar will not be compatible with GH III but you can buy a 2nd guitar for $60 to round out your four person band.

To help compensate for the lack of DLC, five songs will be offered on the Wii disk that were available as DLC on PS3/360. They are:
Roxanne - The Police
Don't Look Back In Anger - Oasis
Rockaway Beach - The Ramones
Dirty Little Secret - The All-American Rejects
Roam - The B-52s

Really, most of these limitations are a result of the Wii platform (online play and DLC).

Several people on the Rock Band forums shared that opinion. Although it basically was worded like this: "OMG you ****ing babies quit ****ing whining your getting Rock Band if you don't like it go ****ing buy a ****ing PS3."

So if someone has anything coherent to add, I'd love to hear it. I don't really understand why online play is borked, when the bulk of Wii games are playable online. DLC is impossible due to space restrictions, if I understand correctly. But with SD cards now available up to 4GB, I'm not sure that's accurate. It'd definitely be expensive to DLC and probably inconvenient, but impossible? And DLC is so important to Rock Band, as there are more songs available through DLC than there are on the game when purchased.

This is a lazy port. I understand no DLC since Nintendo needs to add either usb hdd support or support for 8+gb flash drives. Wiiware in May will allow DLC to happen, but users have limited space to hold the songs. But it is technically now possible to do DLC as of May.

However, the lack of online is very bad and lazy. This may sell a lot because wii is a better target dem for this game than ps360 as gh3 showed, but the lack of online will hurt it. Also, they coulda added more than 5 songs since no dlc...

oh yeah, i voted no for purchase

i prefer gh3 guitar >>>>>>>>>>>>> rb guitar...i like the drums/vocals, but not enough to get this and my friends have rb anyway so i can get my fix at their house...i'm not gonna drum/sing by myself when i could just play gh3 instead

Yea, I'm guessing that these problems could all be worked around if the developer took the time. However, I'm also betting that Nintendo has some pretty big restrictions on network play given the whole friend code crap all online games have.

Will the disc be available by itself? I would buy that since I already have GHIII and its much better guitar.

nope; another laziness issue; gh3 guitar not compatible

it's sad how gimped this version is

wrong, that isn't laziness. That is activision wanting to charge Harmonix for the right to use their guitar, and Harmonix not wanting to pay.

I've been waiting for this announcement. This has made my choice easy. I will be buying a PS3 specifically because of this. Several things here suck. No DLC, No Online play, No World Tour (wtf?), no GH guitar. I actually bought a second GH3 guitar in anticipation I would be using with RB.

Pretty lame and I'm pretty pissed actually. The Blue Ray player in PS3 is a driving factor.

ah, i see

I was looking forward to it but have since changed my mind. Not being able to use my GH guitar, no DLC, and the guitar just isnt as good from what I've read. Besides the price alone for the whole set is hard to rationalize on a single game. That plus GH aerosmith coming out soon will take my time up so I'm going to pass.

It seems so silly to me to not use the wiimote in the guitars. If they had used the wiimote in the design, I'd have to believe guitars would be cheaper to make (less electronics). Plus the guitar would have a speaker in it, it would vibrate, and have a better tilt sensor. Even if they had used the wiimote, they still could've designed it to be incompatible with the GH guitar. I guess they didn't want to spend the money to design a new guitar?

It's so funny how this announcement has totally changed my gaming purchases in '08. I had planned on buying Rock Band and now I won't. I had planned on not buying Guitar Hero: Aerosmith but now I almost definitely will.

I voted no, but only because I didn't read the "I own Rock Band for another system, so no" option before doing so.

i voted no because i own another system and because of the online differences it makes buying it on my other system an easy no brainer.

i had no problem playin online with GH3 though...dont know why they cant do it with RB

Is the GH guitar compatible with Rock Band on the 360?

Oh, I voted no. If I ever do get Rock Band, it'll be for the 360. There've been 85 DLC songs for 360/PS3. Anyone who owns a 360 or PS3 would be foolish to buy the Wii version of Rock Band.

Yeah. Only because Microsoft basically said if you want to release a peripheral on our system, we get to determined how it is used.

Shocking that Nintendo doesn't have enough clout to force the same thing with peripherals for their system.

It's ******ed that it won't be compatible with the GHIII guiter. I voted yes, but now that I see the limitations, I probably will not buy it.

I agree with this, but its an Activision (GH3) issue, not HMX (if the reason for this is the same as the PS3 one). Not that it really matters to the consumer, they just want the stuff to work.

If I only had a Wii I don't know if I would buy RB. Because of the price, a big part of the game is the DLC...being able to add on to the game. Without it, the disk songs would get boring, imo. Also for a lot of people the online component is huge, since the big draw of the game is playing with others.

I'm not sure if the game is worth the price without these features, and I love the game.

I absolutely hate the RB guitar. Hate hate hate hate hate it. I will definitely not be buying this now.

I was excited to see this, but if the GH3 guitar doesn't work with it then I will not be buying this on the Wii. Makes GH3 Aerosmith a must buy now.

If you are over 12 and play rock band or any of those ******ed games...my respect for you just dropped a level.

Funny thing, I have no respect for you anymore after that ******ed comment

But how will I live with myself?

Also, if you're looking for a discussion of games that aren't intended for pre-teens and the mentally handicapped it might be in your best interest to read the thread's title before entering.