First Impressions of the Rock Band Network

So, the Rock Band Network has been out for a while now, but I haven't really had a chance to mess around with it too much. However, I recently popped in that copy of Rock Band 2 and decided to take a look. I must say, it's quite impressive.

The RBN is located in the "Music Store" menu as a separate item, letting you easily sepearte the official Harmonix releases from the releases on the Rock Band Network. Once you get into the RBN store, it's sorted a little differently than the main store is. You have a few options here, "Top 10" which gives you the top 10 highest rated songs, "Harmonix Picks" which gives you a select number of songs Harmonix liked and hand-picked for that week, "Browse" which lets you simply sift through all of the songs, and "Random Song" if you'd like to be surprised.

If you choose Browse, there's gonna be a bunch of extra ways you can go through all the songs. by Artist, by Author (The user who charted the song), by Label, by Genre, by Language (yes, there are foreign-language songs on the network), by Title, or by Rating.

The sorting is obviously very deep, and will allow you to find any song on the network you are specifically looking for very quickly. It also seems to be built to handle thousands upon thousands of songs, which makes sense if the network becomes popular enough. At the time of this writing, there have been 168 songs released on the Network, which is quite impressive for only having been out one month.

One of the best parts of the Rock Band Network is the ability to download free Demo versions of songs. When I first heard about this, I was wondering exactly how it'd work, but it's actually quite smart. You download the demo-version, you're unable to use it in Tour Mode, Practice Mode, or Online. The only way you can play it is in Solo or Band quick-play. You can play it as many times as you like, however, you can only play through the first 30 seconds of the song, and it'll cut off and go to a "Demo Over" screen, complete with a "Buy Now" option.

This seems really effective in making people want to throw down their cash right away to finish the song. It also gives people a chance to see how well-charted the song is, and gives them a little bit more to listen to of the song than the initial preview-track at the Store-level.

Another great thing about the Rock Band Network is the support it's getting from artists. I've seen a few big-name artists on here such as Drowning Pool, Bang Camaro, Senses Fail, Third-Eye Blind, All That Remains, KMFDM, and probobly the biggest name so far, Steve Vai! I've also found out about a few unknown artists that I personally really enjoy such as DNA's Evolution with their track "The Heist" and The Hold Steady with their track "Sequestered in Memphis".

Overall, there's some great music in the Rock Band Network, and it seems like it'll keep expanding and growing larger. Maybe someday soon we'll see day-and-date Rock Band Network releases with Artist's releases on itunes or other music download services.

The Who to Have Super Bowl S-Mashup in the Rock Band Music Store

Well folks, it's Super Bowl Sunday, and while I normally don't follow sports, this story flows over well enough into video games that I felt it was relevant.

As we all should know, The Who is preforming live at the Super Bowl Halftime show this year. Harmonix is getting in on the deal by releasing a specially recorded version of the performance The Who plan to play, and they're releasing it directly after the Super Bowl!

They have announced on the official forums that it will be available for 160 MS Points on the Xbox 360, and $1.99 on the Wii... The PS3 version is said to be "coming soon" which I'm guessing is going to be the standard Thursday update for PSN.

This is rather surprising that they're releasing it on Sunday. Besides the 20 free DLC songs, which didn't really have a definitive release date, this is a first for Harmonix, and it'll be interesting to see if they do any more of this kind of thing in the future.

Rock Band Network Goes into Open Beta

Rock Band Network has just went into open beta, meaning that we now get to see all of the songs that are being released, and if we had the proper tools, we'd be able to upload our own. Anybody with an XNA account, an Xbox Live Gold account, and a free account on the Rock Band Network website can now do peer reviewing and auditioning on newly submitted Rock Band Network songs. And if you have all that, a license to use reaper, and a free copy of Magma, you'll be able to upload your own songs for peer review!

That's right, in order to audition any songs, you'll need an XNA membership. Kind of disappointing to me, since i'd love to preview and rate some songs before I decide to download them or not, but (provided you're logged in to the site with your free account) at least we can still see all of the songs on the website (complete with audio previews) at this link here.

Currently, my favorite song on the network has to be "White Heat" by Cetan Clawson and the Soul Side, just based on the previews I listened to.

At the time of this writing, there's 38 songs approved in total with more on the way in the coming months. Currently, the songs have not been published to any sort of store, all of that's being saved for the full-launch of the network. I wouldn't be surprised if by the time that happens, we'd have over 200 songs already on the service! I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

Queen Rock Band?

1UP had some news regarding plans for a Rock Band game based on Queen songs, highlighting the "eagerness" of Brian May that Queen would get a treatment similar to Beatles Rock Band.

Beatles Rock Band was a curious concept considering it would center around just Beatles songs, rather than easy-to-sell hits from many bands. Face it, it wasn't hard to like the Beatles. It was a profitable venture that even demands its own DLC, although this isn't confirmed.

But Queen, okay sounds like another winner but in a lighthearted way I find it not necessary. Queen isn't as universally liked or long in its existence as the Beatles were, that's not enough to make me NOT WANT Queen Rock Band. Although, Queen Rock Band sounds a bit funny, it sounds more feminine than about the band LOL!

But if Queen songs have already appeared on Rock Band DLC, what is the point of making a seperate game when Queen could just put the songs as DLC. I guess seeing how popular they were led to them wanting to cash in, not that I blame them.

Harmonix doubts success of Beatles Rock Band DLC

Over on 1UP is an article regarding Harmonix and their uneasy feelings about paying the thousands of dollars to offer more Beatles songs as DLC:

"It's not like Rock Band where we wait for the masters to come in and just author them ... its like, send people to Abbey Road, use the original tape, separate them out," Harmonix representative John Drake told BBPS.

Fair enough, the Beatles is a highly guarded group in terms of profits ($$$), and Harmonix simply isn't sure "demand" will be there. But I honestly roll my eyes at the fact that they went through with the ridiculous royalties to make this game, and now decide to whine about how hard it is to make DLC.

Sure, they could just not do it and enjoy the "decent profit" they made, but of course they want more. Take the risk Harmonix, I want Help! to be released.

Geeksquisite attends The Beatles: Rock Band Launch Party

A local radio station, WBAB, hosted a midnight release for The Beatles: Rockband. There was a live cover band, The Daytrippers, a raffle, the game was up and playable, and there was some Karaoke too. Me and Ed went to this event and filmed some stuff for you guys. Enjoy!

Live Beatles: Rock Band Justin.tv stream tonight

Hey check back to the channel approx 6:15-6:30 EST for a live showing of the game.

Watch live video from Geeksquisite on Justin.tv

Harmonix, Rock Band 3, and Natal

Rock Band 3 yo!

I always wondered, would I buy a third Rock Band game? No i'm not talking about Beatles Rock Band, I actually am not interested in that game. But I thought Rock Band 2 would be my last Rock Band Franchise game i would get, until Harmonix had this to say.

"We aren't standing still – we will keep moving into new areas and look at new technologies that our platform holder partners are also developing, such as Project Natal from Microsoft,"

Natal eh? that catches my interest. Imagine if you didnt have to see your avatar on stage rock in random directions, imagine if you avatar mimics your movements through Natal. That's a nice idea but I bet Harmonix has more ideas in store than that, and I'm curious to what they will implement.

Does this mean Natal will come out in September, that's the release month for Harmonix's games so Natal would have to be out if they're including such functionality.

New The Beatles: Rock Band Trailer

Hey guys wanted to share with you this new The Beatles; Rock Band trailer that just hit the web. The game shows off 8 new songs added to the 10 announced at E3 2009.

the new 8 songs:

Paperback Writer
Twist & Shout
Can't Buy Me Love
Eight Days A Week
Yellow Submarine
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Within You Without You
Revolution

The biggest song here for me HAS to be Revolution. It's just simply one of the greatest written songs of all time. I'm honestly not a huge music efficienato but I know when I hear something important. I can't wait to be able to belt out this song and play the guitar and drum. Hell I should try it all at once...maybe?

The Beatles: Rock Band hits shelves 9/9/09 Enjoy.




*UPDATE*

Another 7 new songs also announced this morning.

Do You Want To Know A Secret
I Wanna Be Your man
And Your Bird Can Sing
With a little Help From My Friends
Birthday
I Got a Feeling
Dig a Pony?

Gotta love seeing With a Little Help From My Friends. Another epic song bringing the total to 25 announced songs out of 45.

Rock Band Network Announced

Earlier today, Harmonix launched a site for their new Rock Band Network, http://creators.rockband.com. The Rock Band Network is the new tool that's going to be coming soon to Rock Band that will allow people to put their own music into the game.

The Rock Band Network, allows you to import different parts of a master track into separate software, running on your computer. You'll compile the tracks, and then you can chart the song for use in Rock Band. You'll also have control over stuff that's happening with your characters on stage, such as lighting and camera angles.

Now, a lot of you you may be wondering why we'd ever buy the official tracks ever again. If people can import music on their PC and chart it, we could have some Zeppelin on Rock Band once this thing is released, right? Wrong. Once somebody submits a track, it's looked at by Harmonix and checked for copyright infringement, among other stuff like playability issues and explicit language. Once a track passes Harmonix's good graces, then it gets put on the Rock Band Network store (Which appears to be in a separate menu from the main store), where you can charge anywhere between $.50 to $3 bucks.

This whole thing kind of reminds me of the music creator in Guitar Hero: World Tour. The system in World Tour allowed anybody to simply make midi-based tracks by pushing the buttons on the guitar, and hoping you could come out with something nice sounding, and playable. The difference between that system and the Rock Band Network is the barrier of entry. In order to get a song up on the Rock Band Network, you need this program called Reaper which costs $60, an XNA Creator's Club account that costs $99 a year, and another program called Magma (Which I haven't heard of and am hoping is provided for free.)

It looks like the Rock Band Network is targeting actual artists interested in putting stuff up on the store, and the high price won't be too much of a problem since they get 30% of the profit, this also keeps joke bands from uploading purposely bad songs because they know those songs won't sell. The Rock Band Network is scheduled to be released later this year, and a closed beta is going to be running from late July to mid August. Here's hoping the network is a success, and hey... who knows? Maybe I'll start a band and put something up myself.