Some Japanese Music Finally On The Way To Rock Band?

Anyone who knows me personally knows that I'm a huge fan of Rock Band, I don't hide that. I also have a soft spot for some Japanese music.

With it looking seriously unlikely that the Rock Band Japan project that was announced last year, Harmonix contacted JRock fansite JRockRevolution's readers to list the bands that they wanted to see in Rock Band. The results were maybe a little surprising or unsurprising how you look at it.



the GazettE
Dir en grey
X JAPAN
MIYAVI
GACKT
An Café
D'espairsRay
Nightmare
L'Arc~en~Ciel
Versailles ~Philharmonic Quintent~

What do I think? Well after a day of rooting about on spotify, it seems a lot of it seems very similar. I would've prefered to see a list that shows of the wide variety of music in Japan. Bands like Maximum the Hormone, Electric Eel Shock, Mad Capsule Markets, Nana Kitade, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, hell maybe some Utada would show that.

The other problem is who would buy the songs? I know some of these bands have a hardcore following outside of Japan, hell Dir en Grey have been on the cover of Kerrang, but are these going to sell that well? Is your average Rock Band player going to want to sing in Romanji? Who knows?

I just hope that Harmonix isn't stuck down a generic Visual Kei path because its what "some" J-Rock fans want.