Gaming and Culture

If you're an independent musician looking for as many ways to sell and promote your music as possible, and you or a friend has some experience with software development, you'll want to check out the upcoming Rock Band Network, for which Harmonix and MTV Games plan to begin beta testing in late August.

It's more complicated than posting a song to iTunes, but you'll get placement on a more exclusive platform.

(Credit: MTV Games)

To program songs for the game, you or your developer friend first needs a membership to Microsoft's XNA Creators' Club, which was launched a couple years ago to let independent developers create casual games to sell through the Xbox Live Marketplace; a membership costs $49.99 for four months or $99.99 for a year.

You'll then be able to get free tools and instructions from the Rock Band Creators Web site to convert your master recordings to the MIDI charts used by the game. Next, you'll have to submit your song for other creators to critique and finally to MTV Games for approval.

Once approved, the song will enter the Rock Band Network. All songs will debut exclusively for 30 days on the Xbox 360, and the Rock Band team will pick stand-out songs to make available to the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii consoles.

Under the network terms, musicians can charge between 50 cents and $3 per song, and they will keep a 30 percent cut of all sales. That may seem small, compared with the 70 percent cut musicians get for selling their songs on iTunes, which requires much less work, but Rock Band is a much more exclusive platform--you're much more likely to stand out here than among the bazillion songs available through Apple's music store.

Follow Matt on Twitter

The appearance by Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr at the Microsoft Xbox E3 press briefing on Monday caught the world by surprise, and turned into a perfect way to formally introduce 'Beatles: Rock Band.'

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

LOS ANGELES--If you were among the thousands of people at Microsoft's E3 press briefing on Monday, it's a pretty sure bet that the appearance on-stage there of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Yoko Ono was one of the most unexpected things imaginable.

But if you think about it, the very existence of the game that led to their showing up during the Xbox press briefing, Harmonix and MTV Games' "Beatles: Rock Band," is even more surprising. After all, the Beatles have, over the years, maintained a stranglehold over control of their music. For example the Beatles are still the holy grail that iTunes has not yet been able to corral.

The game will be released on September 9 (09.09.09) on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, and the Wii.

So how did the game come to pass?

Since the two remaining Beatles weren't able to come to the phone for this article, I decided to stop by the Harmonix booth at E3 and ask the game's lead designer, Chris Foster, for the skinny behind what has got to be one of the biggest coups in video gaming history.

Foster said the story begins a couple of years ago, when MTV President Van Toffler ran into Dhani Harrison, son of the late Beatles guitarist George Harrison, in some random social setting.

"It was just sort of through happenstance," Foster said. "Dhani was a big 'Rock Band' fan, and there was this sort of, 'Wouldn't it be nice if...but it'll never happen.'"

Beatles RockBand rocks E3

View the full gallery

But being a "Rock Band" fan, Dhani Harrison took his idea to Harmonix CEO and co-founder Alex Rigopulos and began a conversation about what a Beatles version of "Rock Band" could be. Foster said that the idea seemed like a huge challenge, but, deciding to pursue it, Harrison began evangelizing the idea to Apple Corps, the Beatles' U.K. publisher, and its shareholders, particularly McCartney, Starr, and Ono.

"So then, from that point, it was just sort of getting them familiar with ('Rock Band')," Foster said, "and getting them understanding what the game could be like."

By now, the discussions were far enough along that Harmonix put together a simple demo of the kind of music and conceptual art that could be used in the game, Foster said.

And, amazingly, inexplicably, it worked.

Creative partners
"At that point," Foster recalled, things "moved to (the Beatles) being creative partners" in the project. One of the most vital things to happen at that point was the introduction of music producer Giles Martin to the "Rock Band" project. Martin, the son of the Beatles' original producer, George Martin, helped Cirque du Soleil put together its Beatles show, "Love."

That was crucial, Foster said, because Martin was able to help solve one of the most important problems any Beatles "Rock Band" game would have, adding multitrack capabilities.

"We needed multitrack," Foster said, "because in 'Rock Band,' (players) need to get (individual) feedback about whether they're playing well or not. So with all those pieces in place, we were able to do a demo of what the music (in the game) would be like."

As things progressed, the developers knew that to make the game feel authentic, they'd have to offer players real Beatles venues to play in. So they worked to add famous Beatles locations like Liverpool's famous Cavern Club, the Ed Sullivan theater, Shea Stadium, the Budokan in Tokyo, and the rooftop at Apple Corps.

Then, Foster said, the development team came up with the idea for adding psychedelic dreamscape visions to the game. The game's trailer (see below) does a great job of demonstrating that element, as do some of the best pieces of Cirque du Soleil's "Love."

'We respected them and their music'
To Foster, the chief reason that the improbable game ever came together at all is that "they liked that we respected them and respected their music. I don't want to put words in their mouths, but what was important to us was that we respected them."

That's one reason that the development team made sure to include venues where the Beatles had actually played famous shows. "We weren't shoving them into live venues that didn't make sense," he said.

Another important factor was the developers' adding the ability to include vocal harmonies as part of game play.

"Their music is so much about harmonies," he said. Adding vocal harmonies was something that had never been done in "Rock Band" before, but it was considered vital to accurately representing the Beatles' music in the game.

And that also presented the developers with a hurdle they had to clear.

"The challenge (was) making it so vocal harmonies were fun and challenging, but really accessible, and finding a way to put that in the game, without overwhelming" players, Foster said. "(We didn't want to make them) feel like they failed to sing like the Beatles."

Foster acknowledged that contracting with the Beatles was a huge win for Harmonix, especially when it's been clear for some time that "lots of people were thinking about doing it."

The game is already being anxiously awaited by players, developers, and industry executives alike, and for both game play and business reasons.

"Clearly, (the Beatles) saw an opportunity of reintroducing their music to the current music-loving consumer and it makes perfect sense for them as they try and manage their brand," said Nintendo President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime. "So I think it makes a lot of sense and, candidly, what the music industry is finding is that the games industry is a great way to drive music sales."

And for Microsoft, having McCartney, Starr, and Ono take the stage at the Xbox press briefing at the University of Southern California's Galen Center was a gigantic victory. A Microsoft spokesperson said that the appearance came about because the company is always talking to its publisher partners, including, in this case, MTV Games. And that as "Beatles: Rock Band" progressed, the Beatles decided that the Xbox press briefing would be a very appropriate place to announce the game.

Note to Sony and Nintendo: Work harder at finessing those publisher partner contacts, and next time, maybe the stars will pick your E3 briefing.

To Foster, a big part of what makes the game seem authentic was that the designers concentrated on "telling the Beatles' story" but still finding a way to do so in the context of a "Rock Band" game that fans of both the band and the game franchise would appreciate and recognize. And also because the game will appeal to even the youngest Beatles fans.

He explained that the Harmonix team liked the idea of bringing new, younger audiences to the Beatles for the first time. But reality soon disabused them of that notion.

"The (Beatles') music is like the air we breathe," Foster said, "and it catches every generation...It's sort of presumptuous to think you can introduce the Beatles to anyone."

Here it is. It's the latest trailer for Batman: Arkham Asylum. The trailer is set to air Thursday night on MTV, but fortunately for us, Stephen Totilo, from MTV's Multiplayer, decided to post it early for everyone to drool over.

Eidos and developer Rocksteady Studios set expectations very high when the first trailer for "Batman: Arkham Asylum" debuted in November. The setting of Arkham Asylum combined with the dark tone of the story seemed to embody the feel of Batman's universe.

With Emmy Award-winning "Batman: The Animated Series" producer Paul Dini writing the game's story, and the voice-over stars Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill reprising their roles as Batman and the Joker from the series, respectively, all signs continue to indicate that "Batman: Arkham Asylum" is a game that Batman fans have been waiting a long, long time for.

This particular trailer starts off with a great Joker narration (voiced by Mark Hamill). Adding to Joker's dialogue is a focus on Batman's so-called Invisible Predator stealth combat techniques. After viewing the video, check out some of the screenshots of the game below.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

(Source: Joystiq via MTV Multiplayer)

We knew the music of the Beatles was coming to the MTV video game Rock Band, but now we have a release date: September 9, 2009. That's when you'll be able to get The Beatles: Rock Band, a new edition of the game for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii consoles. You can start working on your bad "lonely hearts club band" puns now.

The game itself will retail for $59.99 in the U.S.; there will also be a $99.99 version that comes with Beatles-inspired guitar controllers, and a $249.99 "special edition" bundle. I'm guessing that one comes with a walrus.

The date is awfully cute, considering the Beatles' formally self-titled "White Album" contains that song called "Revolution 9," which consists largely of a repetition of the phrase "number nine, number nine, number nine." Conspiracy theorists say that if you play it backward it sounds like "turn me on, dead man" and is hence one of the clues that adds up to reveal that Paul McCartney died and was replaced by a lookalike early in the band's career.

But here's something else for conspiracy theorists of a different variety. September 9, 2009, happens to be a Wednesday in early September, and Apple has historically held iPod-related announcements on Tuesdays in early September. If you want to be mega-speculative, consider that there could be an announcement that week that in addition to Rock Band, the Beatles would finally be coming to iTunes. The band's catalog is currently not legally available for digital download.

There have been legal issues and general animosity for years between Apple Inc. and Apple Corps, the publisher of the Beatles' music. When record label EMI, which owns the rights to the Beatles catalog, inked a deal with Apple to make its catalog available on iTunes without DRM, buzz circulated that the Beatles could be added to the digital-media emporium soon. It's been almost two years, and no Fab Four yet. Late last year, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney said that talks had stalled. There's no real gauge on where things stand now.

But I guess you could just try playing a Steve Jobs keynote backward and see what hidden messages surface.