Exporting Songs From Rock Band 1 to Rock Band 2 Will Require Code, Five Bucks, HDD Space

One of Rock Band 2’s more thoughtful features is that you’ll be able to export most of the tracks from your Rock Band 1 disc to play in Rock Band 2 on the Xbox 360 (DLC works with it automatically). Harmonix has just dropped some of the details on how you’ll make this happen. It’s easy, and it’ll cost you about US$5 (and a considerable chunk of hard drive space), as expected.

On the day Rock Band 2 shimmies onto store shelves, Rock Band 1 will get an update that’ll add an “export” option. It’ll ask you for a password, which is included with your copy of Rock Band 2. After you punch in the code you’ll have to pay up, but Harmonix says it won’t be more than five bucks (the money is for rights holders). Then all of your songs, or at least the ones you’re allowed to port, will be copied to your hard drive. Harmonix’s PR dude John Drake also said that if you buy Rock Band 2 and just rent Rock Band 1, you’ll probably be able to copy the songs as long as you pay the fee.

There are some songs you might not be able to move over, but Harmonix hasn’t said which ones yet. One thing to consider is that if you copy over most of the songs, while Harmonix didn’t dish the exact numbers, you’re probably talking a couple gigabytes of your hard drive permanently gone (roughly ~30MB/song x 58 songs = 1.74GB), which might be an issue if you’ve only got a 20GB model. Still, we’re pretty happy about this. [Multiplayer via Kotaku]