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Old 10-30-2008, 12:50 PM   #1
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Rock Band gets to " Come Together "
VIA THE Wall Street Journal


Beatles Tunes Join Rock Band Game
By ETHAN SMITH, YUKARI IWATANI KANE and SAM SCHECHNER



The Beatles have licensed songs to MTV Networks' Rock Band videogame series, according to several people familiar with the matter, a coup for the Viacom Inc. unit in its battle with rival Activision Blizzard Inc. for supremacy in the world of rock-and-roll videogames.

The deal, which is set to be announced on Thursday by Viacom's MTV and the band's own Apple Corps Ltd., makes the Beatles the next and biggest major band to license its songs to a music-oriented videogame, joining Aerosmith, Metallica, AC/DC and others.

Rock Band and Activision's Guitar Hero have engaged in heated competition over exclusive rights to use music by major acts, entering multimillion-dollar licensing agreements with a handful of the biggest names in the business.

The games let players use plastic game controllers, shaped like miniature musical instruments, to simulate playing rock and pop songs. Players are scored on how well they hit notes.

The Beatles represent the biggest prize to date in the category. Not only do they have the best-selling album catalog of any band, they haven't yet licensed their music for sale by download services such as Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store.

A spokesman for Apple Corps didn't return a call for comment. Spokeswomen for EMI Group Ltd., the Beatles' record label, and for MTV declined to comment.

Speculating on when the Beatles will reach a deal to sell downloads of their catalog is a music-industry pastime. The fact that a videogame publisher beat iTunes and its rivals to the punch highlights the growing importance of music-oriented game titles. With recorded-music sales in a long, steep decline, videogames can be more lucrative for big, sought-after bands than traditional sales.

According to DFC Intelligence, which follows the industry, music and dance games generated more than $1.2 billion in domestic revenue in 2007; sales this year already had come close to $1 billion at the end of September.

For MTV, the deal adds luster to the Rock Band series. It made its debut a year ago, a couple of years after the original Guitar Hero came out for Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2 console. Guitar Hero initially included only a make-believe guitar, while Rock Band added drums and vocals to the game.

DFC estimates that Guitar Hero and its sequels have generated more than $1.5 billion in cumulative revenue so far, three times as much as Rock Band. However, the two games are competing neck-and-neck so far this year, with MTV's launch of Rock Band 2 and Activision's latest, Guitar Hero World Tour, this past Sunday. Guitar Hero has issued seven titles to date, while Rock Band -- distributed by Electronic Arts Inc. -- has put out just two titles.

Beatles songs available on a Rock Band game are likely to be popular, but analysts point out that the challenge will be in reaching out to Beatles fans, many of whom are in their 50s and 60s, and marketing the game in a way that will persuade them to buy a videogame console and try the game.

Key details about the Beatles game release couldn't be learned, such as which songs, and from what era of the band's career, are to be included. A release date and price also couldn't be learned. Rock Band is a product of Harmonix, a division of MTV.

Rock Band has taken on added importance to Viacom as its cable networks reel from the sluggish advertising market. The company doesn't break out Rock Band revenue, but in the first half of the year, the game drove Viacom's media networks to pull in $639 million in world-wide ancillary revenue, a 67% increase over the year-earlier period, according to filings. That growth appears to be continuing: In the third quarter, ancillary revenue increased at a "double-digit rate," even as U.S. ad sales on Viacom's cable networks, such as MTV, fell 3%, the company said.










All I can say is hell fucking yes.

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Old 10-30-2008, 12:54 PM   #2
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Heh, out-date news already

It's not a Rock Band game, highlights from the conference from http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/30/ro...-now-official/

* "This will not be a Rock Band title, this will be a custom title"
* Journey through The Beatles first album through their last -- "samples" from their whole catalog
* "A number of new dimensions" that you haven't seen from Harmonix before
* Just in time for the holidays ... in 2009
* Tracks are based on UK releases -- the idea is to play the songs through The Beatles career (not remixed or remastered tracks, we think)
* Is the imagery tied to the existing art from the songs and albums? The developers aren't prepared to talk about specifics, but "visual imagery" is a big part of the project
* Interoperability is not something that's being talked about yet
* "Very little" can be said about the game itself today. "MTV and Harmonix was clearly the innovator in this category of games" -- Apple Corps was really impressed with Harmonix's creative and musical approach
* "It's not a Rock Band game, it's a Beatles game. They deserve a fully dedicated title. [The game] takes advantage of the Rock Band platform in many ways ... [and it's] going to be compatible with existing Rock Band peripherals" -- we can assume that instruments from other music games (e.g., Guitar Hero) will also be supported
* No hardware platforms announced
* No comment on licensing Beatles tunes for other games -- this is an exclusive arrangement for Beatles music in video games (as for digital distribution of The Beatles catalog on music services (e.g., iTunes): Apple Corps is still working out details; no announcement to make nor date nor anything else!)
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Old 10-30-2008, 12:56 PM   #3
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Yeah I know I commented on it in the RB2 topic : (
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Old 10-30-2008, 01:28 PM   #4
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Well I guess what I posted a few months ago was half right.

I guess that saves KK from coming over and killing me.
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Old 10-30-2008, 02:45 PM   #5
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Meh, I like the Beatles, but if there's no DLC and you have to buy the disc like the AC/DC thing, I'll pass.
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Old 10-30-2008, 02:46 PM   #6
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Rock Band: Beetles.

Okay.
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Old 10-30-2008, 04:35 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Diesel Mac View Post
Meh, I like the Beatles, but if there's no DLC and you have to buy the disc like the AC/DC thing, I'll pass.
It looks like we'll see a huge amount of music in this game though, and all from the Beatles catalogue. This will be more like Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, only without half the disc being filler.

And without the Rock Band name attached.

AC/DC is shite because we're getting a feature-free set of songs for the price of a cheap game. The only redeeming quality is that you can export, but even that's a one-time code, not valid on re-sales and potentially up to be cracked (Apparently, the RB2 bonus song codes were cracked...). Still, the Beatles game will offer a Beatles experience, not just Quickplay with random prefabs.

I could see myself buying it, if it's got enough songs. Plus, the Beatles>>>>>>>>>>AC/DC.
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Old 10-30-2008, 05:31 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kane Knight View Post
(Apparently, the RB2 bonus song codes were cracked...).
I haven't looked amazingly hard, because they're apparently on the PAL disc anyways, but it seems like it was a fake.
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Old 10-31-2008, 02:10 AM   #9
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This is something I will buy immediately upon release.
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