But I think Freakhead nailed the difference. Rock Band is musical, but it’s also like playing Simon.

But I think Wii Music is a different take on music games and not just RB for non-gamers so I wouldn’t be so eager to directly compare them.

I’ll post some thoughts about it when I get my hands on it. I was only sharing my perceptions above as the game is not out yet.

The ability to control your tempo and the arrangements of tunes are two features that I don’t believe RB or GH have. Those 2 things are the expressive appeal akin to creating real music that caught my interest. It’s a different take.

From what I’ve read that seems lost on most of the gaming press who immediately dismiss it as RB without plastic instruments for non-gamers and 6 yr olds.

Maybe I’ll end up agreeing with them, but most of the criticism seems to ignore these things and focuses on its not RB or GH. You can’t fail.

The reality is you can’t fail in real music. You don’t get a high score in real music. You don’t get a number that spits out at the end of each song saying 95% of the notes hit. The reward is in expressing yourself and being creative and playing something you’ll enjoy. Real music is open to interpretation.

This is the essence of music that Wii Music looks like it’s trying to capture.

I was just trying to describe how, to me, it seems like there’s a big difference in the approaches taken between these two games that are put together in the same gaming category. From what I’ve seen, Wii Music uses your existing generic gaming controllers to simulate the actions of playing instruments and doesn’t reward or penalize your skill at doing so. Rock Band gives you controllers that simulate its specific instruments. It then encourages you to try to get better at using those “instruments” by rewarding and penalizing you for your skill at doing so.

This seems like a pretty fundamental difference to me, as the latter does a good job of putting you into the experience.

Before I got Rock Band, I fully expected to have some fun playing the game because I’d seen lots of positive feedback. Otherwise, I’d never have spent $90+ for a video game. What I didn’t expect was that others in my family would have as much fun as they do. So, in a similar fashion, what I’ve been saying, in part, is that although I am skeptical about Wii Music, I’ve still got an open mind on it.

I know you aren’t trying to be (too) snarky in your reply, but I’m honestly trying to clarify my current thoughts on Wii Music, without going overboard.

“I think Game A is completely retarded. Wait, let me share a story about another game, game B. IT moves the earth for my wife. We see stars in our sleep. We have sweet sweet dreams about this game. We worship at its altar. She sneaks out to make sweet love with the game. In public she can’t keep her hands off it.

Now I cannot fathom for a minute that Game A will trigger anything of this sort of thing in us.

But, feel free to convince me otherwise. ”

I guess you’ll never play another game. Everything else will be a letdown.

My wife isn’t a gamer. Playing a game is not something that comes to her mind when thinking of something to do for fun. What games she will play, such as Scrabble, she doesn’t play it to win as much as to be filling time and maybe trying to get her kids to be better with words. (Winning at scrabble is much more about numbers than words, but she’ll play it because she sees it as a word game.)

However, a few weeks ago I decided to pick up Rock Band for the Wii. Pretty much the only other rhythm game we had before that was Elite Beat Agents on the DS. My wife showed *no* interest in EBA, even though there were more than a few songs on it that she would enjoy listening to.

Anyway, after putting RB’s instruments all together and getting it all plugged in, I started trying it out, and I had a really fun time. Our kids did, too, although more so with my daughter than my platform-gaming son. What was unusual was that my wife enjoyed watching one or more of us playing through the RB songs. Normally she’s more of the “why don’t you go outside and have fun instead?” kind of mom.

And, within a week or so, she (on her own) decided that she wanted to play. I hadn’t even suggested it to her. We’ve been married for decades now, and I just hadn’t any expectation that she’d be interested.

Anyway, she has fun with the game, too. Enough so that she even has gone into the practice area to be able to play some songs at higher difficulties. She isn’t motivated at all by the scores; she wants to get better so that she can play the parts that are more like the way the actual musicians would be playing. Now, she apparently has little to no interest in singing, but likes doing the guitar. Maybe this is a reflection on a childhood desire to learn how to play the guitar.

A week or two ago we happened to visit a mall (pretty unusual for us) and we walking into a GameStop which had a 360 with RB with guitar set up. While I was doing a quick look to see if there was any games that caught my interest, I was surprised to turn and see my wife playing a RB song.

In public.

I just cannot fathom that anything like the above would happen with Wii Music. You can’t mentally put yourself into being a member of a band by wiggling or holding Wii remotes or nunchucks.

But, feel free to convince me otherwise.

RB and GH are mechanical in nature. HIt the right colored button at the right time. More like an old school videogame one that Rain Man might excel at.

Maybe I’m just haven’t really been introduced to what Wii Music really brings to the table, but it seems like it’s not much more than a glorified version of some of the WarioWare mini games.

I’ll read whatever you folks write up on it, though. I can always have my mind changed.

None of the DS games seem that interesting to me, either. I guess I’m really much more interested in next week (Fallout 3) and November (Rise of the Argonauts and Rock Band 2 for the Wii).

I feel sorry for those folks who only have a PS3 with having to wait until now for Bioshock. It seems unlikely that they haven’t seen plot spoilers by this time. I wonder what the PS3 hacking minigame is like.