With Band Hero and LEGO Rock Band recently released, I picked up Band Hero to play with my family this holiday season and am even looking at LEGO Rock Band since both have several “family friendly” recognizable songs. But then I was trying to understand how the importing works for all these music games and it was somewhat of a headache since there’s over a dozen of them out now. Well, as I went through figuring them out, I decided to write up a guide at the same time, so those of you that are curious about how exporting works for all the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games can now learn from what I just learned. However, please keep in mind that I’m talking about these games specifically from a 360/PS3 perspective – Wii owners may find even more limitations in place since I don’t know much about the Wii versions. I believe the Wii Rock Band universe does not support any sort of exporting but the Wii Guitar Hero universe follows the same limitations as the 360 & PS3 versions.
First off, it’s a given that the Rock Band and Guitar Hero universes do not play together so you cannot export music from one universe to another. Second of all, it’s good to think of all this exporting business centralized around your hard drive like DLC music tracks. Each particular game has potential to “export”, and if it does, any other game that supports it will be able to play it just like DLC. For all intents and purposes, consider exported tracks the same as DLC. The one time cost comes from exporting the track to your hard drive so other games can play it, not for the ability for a particular game to play tracks on your hard drive. If the songs are already on your hard drive, it’s free to play by any games that support the songs.
With that, here is the breakdown:
Rock Band Universe
Rock Band Track Pack 1
Rock Band Track Pack 2
Rock Band Unplugged
Rock Band AC/DC
Rock Band Classic Rock
Rock Band Country
Rock Band Metal
Export: All these discs are free to export one time with a unique code in the game box
Import: n/a
Rock Band
Export: All songs except for 3 are exportable an infinite number of times for $4.99
Import: All Rock Band track packs, LEGO Rock Band, and Rock Band 1-2 DLC (shared)
Rock Band 2
Export: none
Import: Rock Band 1 (except 3 of the songs), all Rock Band track packs, LEGO Rock Band, and Rock Band 1-2 DLC (shared)
The Beatles: Rock Band
Export: none
Import: none
LEGO Rock Band
Export: All songs exportable for $10 one time with a unique code in the game box
Import: All family friendly Rock Band track pack songs, family friendly Rock Band 1 songs, and family friendly Rock Band 1-2 DLC (shared) songs
Guitar Hero Universe
Guitar Hero II
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith
Guitar Hero: Metallica
Guitar Hero: Van Halen
Export: none
Import: none
Guitar Hero World Tour
Export: 35/86 songs for $3.50 one time with a unique code in the game box
Import: none
Guitar Hero Smash Hits
Export: 21/48 songs for $2 one time with a unique code in the game box
Import: none
Guitar Hero 5
Export: 69/85 songs for $6 one time with a unique code in the game box
Import: Guitar Hero World Tour exported tracks, Guitar Hero Smash Hits exported tracks, Guitar Hero World Tour DLC (except 6 Jimi Hendrix songs), Band Hero exported tracks
Band Hero
Export: 61/65 songs for $5 one time with a unique code in the game box
Import: Guitar Hero World Tour exported tracks, Guitar Hero Smash Hits exported tracks, Guitar Hero World Tour DLC (except 6 Jimi Hendrix songs), Guitar Hero 5 exported tracks
Summary
It looks like the two universes are focusing in on a couple games as their primary mediums. The Rock Band Universe focuses around Rock Band 2 – practically every other Rock Band game can export out tracks and Rock Band 2 can import everything in. It’s possible to pick up all the other Rock Band related discs and pay and/or use the code to export the songs, and save for the 3 Rock Band 1 songs, you’ll have everything available to play when you boot up Rock Band 2. That means you can basically sell all the other discs and use Rock Band 2 to play everything.
The Guitar Hero universe is a lot more tricky it seems, because not only did Activision start late with the exporting business, the focus is split between two games now too. While there have been several Guitar Hero games released, it wasn’t until World Tour that the exporting/importing business was implemented. And even then, Activision did a pretty shoddy job since not even half of the tracks for either World Tour or Smash hits are currently exportable. This means even after you export them, you may still want to hold onto the discs in case you ever feel like playing songs that weren’t exported. What’s good with Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero now though is that they can both play the songs exported from World Tour or Smash Hits, and can even play songs exported from each others’ games if the player wants to pay for the associated exporting costs. A higher percentage of Band Hero’s songs are exportable than Guitar Hero 5′s songs, so perhaps Guitar Hero 5 is more fitting as the current primary Guitar Hero Universe hub.
One more thing to think about is to be very cautious about buying used games that have any of these one-time export codes. Many people may simply pick up Band Hero or LEGO Rock Band and pay the export cost and sell the game to Gamestop. If you pick up that same used game, you won’t be able to export it to your system and you’ll be stuck having to use the disc whenever you want to play it. In the case of games you might want to export, try to buy them new. Oh, and make sure you have a hard drive big enough to store all of these songs you plan on exporting. You can export the songs to your hard drive, delete specific songs, and still re-export them in the future should you ever desire to so it may be worth holding onto the discs if you have low hard drive space.
Man…they should just stop releasing games and make everything DLC. Then I could justify the purchase of a new hard drive. Thanks for the guide!
ya i think it’s safe to think of all these new music “games” that allow for exporting as pretty much allowing for you to download them all to play on your preferred game for a pretty expensive price. for example, take into account the retail cost of say, LEGO Rock Band + the cost to export it, and subtract its trade-in value and that’s how much you paid for the DLC. For LEGO Rock Band, I’m guessing maybe $50 retail + $10 export price – $20 trade-in value and it’ll cost about $40 net to have all the LEGO Rock Band tracks downloaded onto your hard drive to play in Rock Band 2.
although gamestop.com has some glitch going on now where you can get LEGO Rock Band for $25 on the 360 heh
proving once again that Activision screwed up the Guitar Hero series and Harmonix is the brains behind music based games.
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