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.

New Rock Band DLC

YES YES YES YES YES

Finally, Rock Band will be adding more Queen to it's list of bands. This is long overdue, and now I have a reason to pick up Rock Band 2 more than once every two weeks.

Thank you 1UP for the....heads up lol

No pricing but here are the songs

"Another One Bites the Dust"
"Crazy Little Thing Called Love"
"One Vision"
"Fat Bottomed Girls"
"I Want It All"
"I Want to Break Free"
"Killer Queen"
"Somebody to Love"
"Tie Your Mother Down"
"Under Pressure"

Some crazy fan of mine wanted me to inform you they come out October 20th, and thy word has been spoken. Good day :D

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.

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.