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.
We've heard about songs getting released on iLike, Imeem, MySpace, and a whole lot else. But Rock Band?
(Credit:
MTV/Harmonix)
That's on the way, according to Microsoft's press conference at the E3 Expo. The New York Times reported that that it could be on the way as rumors swirled that Rock Band 2, the second iteration of the music video game from MTV, would include a track called "Shacklers' Revenge" from legendary hard-rock group Guns N' Roses.
Now it's been confirmed. The long-delayed new Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, is on the way too, and the band has chosen the game, which hits stores this fall, as the venue to release its new single.
The Times points out that games like Rock Band, and Activision Blizzard's rival Guitar Hero, have been a bright spot in an otherwise dismal atmosphere for the music business. They're more profitable for record labels than digital downloads from places like iTunes, because a Rock Band track typically costs more. Sometimes they sell more copies, too. Motley Crue's "Saints of Los Angeles" sold more than three times as many tracks on Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace as a Rock Band song than it did in Apple's iTunes Store.
They're also a way for "old" bands to reach younger audiences, the Times noted. An executive for Anthem Records, which releases music for '70s prog-rock group Rush, said young people have started showing up for the band's concerts after hearing their music for the first time on Guitar Hero or Rock Band.
This post has been updated to confirm the song's release.
NEW YORK--If there were a meter of Internet "fameballing," as Gawker likes to dub those fine folks who get famous on the Internet for something and keep getting more and more notorious even though most people aren't really sure why, it would've been flying off the charts on Sunday night.
The reason? Two of the tech-gossip circuit's most popular poster boys, dapper Mashable exec Pete Cashmore and eccentric Vimeo founder Jakob Lodwick took the stage together in a game of Rock Band.
The performance of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps," with Cashmore on vocals and Lodwick on guitar, took place at an Internet Week New York party thrown by video studio Next New Networks and blog platform Tumblr. Emcee Justin Johnson, a video producer at Next New, had encouraged a band full of Rock Band newbies to amass for the evening's final performance. With some prodding, Lodwick and Cashmore took the stage along with Mashable blogger Alana Taylor and Tumblr user Maria Alegre.
They didn't exactly rock out, as the game classified the performance as a "fail." But hey, they looked great in the process--and it'll certainly provide some fodder for tech-industry gadflies who like to poke fun at Cashmore's suave-Brit attitude and Lodwick's hipster philosophizing.
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