Tag Archives: The Beatles: Rock Band

The Major’s confirmed that All You Need Is Love is now available on Live for The Beatles: Rock Band, which launched today.

The song’s a 360 exclusive, as announced at E3.

Go plastic guitar crazy. Hit the link.

Some pics over at D’toid show-off the The Beatles: Rock Band Limited Edition Bundle which retails for $249.99.

It’s all there. The wireless Ludwig-branded drum kit with a “black oyster pearl finish”, mic-stand, USB microphone, wireless Höfner violin bass with effects switch, eight postcards and advertisement inserts for the upcoming downloadable content.

Loads of pictures there through the link here, all of which made us turn a very unnatural and unbecoming shade of green.

A special edition Xbox 360 customized to honor the Fab Four is being auctioned for charity with proceeds benefiting Doctors Without Borders.

It’s numbered and hand-painted with The Beatles: Rock Band all over it.

Also, starting tomorrow when the game is released, all proceeds for the All You Need Is Love DLC will also go to the charity. Once you have purchased the song, you will be entered to win a limited edition “The Beatles: Rock Band” Xbox 360 console and a Rickenbacker 325 replica guitar controller.

Cool. The console is up on eBay right now, and as of this post, bidding’s currently at $600.00.

EA’s released a handy press release detailing tracks, pricing, future DLC dates and everything else you could possibly want to know about The Beatles: Rock Band. Get it after the break.

The game releases tomorrow. Have £180 to spare? Now you know what to do with it.

Take a look.

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The Beatles: Rock Band may now be a top review-grabbing, sure-to-be-successful super-game, but Paul McCartney’s initial thoughts on Harmonix’s pitch weren’t exactly complimentary.

From this Guardian piece:

There were “a couple of grown-ups standing looking very foolish with these little plastic guitars playing to a screen”, he says. “And we’re going, ‘Yeah, all right… It just looks like a really bad band.’ They said: ‘We really can do a great one with the Beatles, and we’ll show you.’ So Ringo and I got a bit intrigued. They said: ‘Look, the thing is, if we get it right, these things are very, very popular.’ And we go, ‘Yeah, well, we know, because our kids and the young people we know do it.’”

McCartney’s scepticism gently lifted. “The scepticism is in order not to make a terrible mistake,” he explained. “We go, ‘no, no,’ and we’re really down on it, and they’ve really got to prove themselves. We won’t go, ‘Oh, that’s nice… go on boys, you just do it.’ We guard the flame a bit. But then they did come back one day and they had something. They were playing our songs, they had some visuals that were half-working, and the penny dropped. We went, ‘You know what? This could be pretty cool.’”

And the rest is history. Good history, “the Shareholders” hope.

Sir Paul McCartney has revealed that if they were still alive today, his Beatles bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison would have approved of The Beatles: Rock Band concept, also stating they would have been “amused” about it.

“I think they would have been amused. I think they would have seen the point of it,” said McCartney, speaking in an interview with Observer Music Magazine with Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono, widows of George and John.

Ono said: “[John] would have been excited about the Rock Band concept, and very happy with how the music and the visuals of the Beatles were represented.”

Harrison further said: “I hate to say, but I know I’m [George's] biggest fan and biggest critic, and I’m happy with it. I think they did a great job, and if I didn’t like it I would feel very uncomfortable.”

There is more info on the game’s development and how Harmonix didn’t have it easy to get the approval of Ono, Harrison, McCartney and Ringo Starr through the link.

Game’s out on Wednesday for PS3, PS2, 360 and Wii. Everyone loves it.

Do do do doooo…

The embargo for reviews for The Beatles: Rock Band went in the early hours of Sunday morning, and first reactions seem to be very good.

Eurogamer went for a 9. Everyone else? Below are some of the other picks:

• IGN – 9.0 (UK and US)
• GameTrailers – 8.7
• Kotaku – N/A
• Joystiq – N/A
• TeamXbox – 9.3
• VideoGamer – 9
• Strategy Informer – 9.2
• MTV Multiplayer – N/A
• Ve3tro – 9.5

It’s out on Wednesday – 9.9.09 (notice a pattern here yet?) – for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and PS2, alongside the remasters of the band’s 13 albums.

IGN’s video review is after the jump.

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Update 2: Harmonix CEO, Alex Rigopulos, has confirmed “The End” as the 45th song on the The Beatles: Rock Band during the GameStop managers convention in Las Vegas. Good to know.

Update: Apparently the “mystery” song is “The End”. Thanks for spoiling it for us internet, and thanks for the lack of creativity Harmonix – if this turns out to be true.

Original Story: Forty-four songs have been announced for The Beatles: Rock Band so far, but there are actually 45 on the disc.

According to an MTV representative speaking with Kotaku, the remaining track is to remain a surprise for people who purchase the game.

Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s, and Abbey Road are to be released not too long after the September 9 release, so it is doubtful it’s a track off any of those, unless Harmonix decides to purposely be redundant.

The full track list is below the break so you don’t have to go searching the site for it.

Start placing your bets now on what it is. Maybe Eleanor Rigby? Penny Lane? Hey Jude?

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Development on The Beatles: Rock Band had members of the Harmonix “terrified” according to John Drakes.

These feelings of trepidation were present throughout development despite the firm being chosen by Apple Corps to do the game, thanks to the firm’s reverence for the subject matter.

“I don’t know what Apple was considering before they started working with us, and I’m sure that there were conversations on both sides [with Activision],” he told CVG. “I think they saw that we were the company with the most reverence for what they were doing – we’re not looking to turn a quick buck on The Beatles. This is something we’ve loved and respect and would not want to screw up.

“We were terrified while making the game, hoping we don’t make them mad at any point – they’re really nice and easy to work with, but this is The Beatles, you can’t afford to mess this up.”

Drakes also goes on to talk about criticism from bands regarding music games distracting kids from playing real instruments, and the process of getting the remaining Beatles and George and John’s widows involved.

It’s all through the link.

Major Nelson’s podcast number 330 is loaded to the gill with stuff.

Want proof? It’s 321 minutes long and contains chats with Xbox Live boss Stephen Toulouse, The Guild’s Felicia Day, development manager at Tiburon, Ryan Ferwerda chatting about Madden NFL 10, Josh Randall, the creative director behind Beatles Rock Band and Dan Maher, Xbox UK’s XBL editor.

If you don’t feel like listening to the whole thing, the Major has kindly listed the time each one starts.

Very kind of him considering most of us have ADHD.

Hit up the link to hear all about it.

A commercial advertising The Beatles: Rock Band has been released, and it is a bit strange.

Especially George and John. Come on. Seriously.

Anyway, it’s posted after the break. Game’s out September 9.

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Harmonix boss Alex Rigopulos played The Beatles: Rock Band to a party crowd on top of Microsoft’s Cologne offices the other night. We filmed it. For a laugh.

Live the rooftop Beatles German plastic instrument dream right along with us by hitting the link.

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Harmonix gave the business to GamesCom this year in the form of a colossal cacophony of Rock Band news.

First up, the world’s rockin’-est game developer announced that The Beatles: Rock Band has three DLC albums lined up for the rest of 2009, with Abbey Road coming in October, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in November, and Rubber Soul in December. You’ll also be able to jam to Abbey Road’s full 16-minute B-side as one continuous track. Rock on… and on and on and on.

Don’t think Rock Band and Rock Band 2 missed out on the fun, though. Harmonix announced that Queen, Nirvana, Tom Petty, Elton John, Iggy Pop, The White Stripes, Pantera, Talking Heads, Korn, The Raconteurs and more (!) are taking their tours into Rock Band’s virtual world.

The full press release is after the break.

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EA’s released the GamesCom trailer for The Beatles: Rock Band and, holy shit, it’s three kinds of fucking awesome. It has “A Hard Days Night”, “Drive My Car”, “Dear Prudence” and more.

It’s after the jump.

It’s out 9/9/09 for PS3, 360, Wii and PS2.

From IGN.

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Harmonix’s John Drake has told Joystiq that side projects done by members of The Beatles will not be included in the Rock Band game for the band.

However, that doesn’t mean songs created during the solo careers won’t be featured as DLC for the original game.

“The design team really focused on The Beatles: Rock Band being about the four guys,” he told the site. “It’s about the lives and times of these four individuals playing together and the joy that came from the music they made.

“So you won’t see session players, you won’t see the families because it was hard to see where the line would be drawn. I know our creative and executive team spent a lot of time with Apple trying to say, “Do you include Eric Clapton’s solo, or Billy Preston’s keyboard stuff?” So instead, we just made it about those four guys.

“But it is about the defined part of their career, so you probably won’t see Ringo’s solo career, or Wings, or John Lennon’s or George’s songs. It’s going to be just the four Beatles playing together. It doesn’t mean we won’t see any of those songs in Rock Band, or something along those lines.”

More through the link.

Thanks, GoNintendo.

The latest issue of Game Informer‘s dropped what appears to be a near-complete set-list for The Beatles: Rock Band.

Back In the USSR and Taxman are both on it. This may mean we’ll have to buy it.

Get the lot from Joystiq. The game’s out on September 9.

After the break, we’ve posted a new video from The Beatles: Rock Band courtesy of Joystiq.

Ticket to Ride is the track, and the site was nice enough to remove the scrawling notes so you could get the full animated effect of the Fab Four.

Awesome.

Come on September.

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EA’s confirmed its Eurogamer Expo line-up. And here it is:

• Need for Speed: Shift
• Need for Speeed: Nitro
• The Saboteur
• FIFA 10
• Dragon Age: Origins
• Dante’s Inferno
• Brutal Legend
• The Beatles: Rock Band
• Left 4 Dead 2

The event takes place on October 27-28 in Leeds, then on October 30-31 in London. Buy a ticket here.

EA’s put out video of four full tracks from The Beatles: Rock Band, as seen after the break.

Well, either they’re official or they’re not. Make up your own mind.

The game’s out in September. Thanks, Joystiq.

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MTV and Harmonix’s parent company, Viacom, has reported that sales of the Rock Band franchise are down this quarter “due to the soft retail environment”, which has directly impacted revenues for the company.

Q2 revenue dropped 8 percent to $1.97 billion with a 41 percent decline in revenue blamed on poor sales of Rock Band which saw a 12 percent decline in profit to $671 million in the Media Networks division.

Besides the “soft retail environment”, the loss was also attributed to lower advertising revenues and $16 million in severance charges.

Overall, quarterly revenues dropped 14 percent to $3.3 billion, and profit dropped 26 percent to $586 million.

Chief exec Philippe Dauman assured shareholders that the decline is “short-term”, and with Viacom’s “aggressive” cost management and the pending launch of The Beatles: Rock Band in September, a “brighter future” is in the cards.

More through the press release below.

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