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Rock Band tots up 100 million downloads

Harmonix has achieved a staggering number of DLC purchases across the Rock Band series' lifetime - and shows no signs of slowing up.

"We recently hit a significant milestone," Harmonix's VP of business development Chris Rigopulos told Game Informer.

"More than 100 million songs have been downloaded for Rock Band. It’s amazing."

The Rock Band library now offers over 2700 tracks across on-disc and DLC collections, and features more than 900 artists.

Since the service came online in 2007, over five million accounts have access the Rock Band music library. Over a million unique users check in each month, and "and it’s not the same million players each month".

Rigopulos said Xbox 360 users purchase the most DLC, but put this down the the Rock Band Network's greater availability on that service, saying the two consoles demonstrated similar buying habits otherwise. Wii users trailed far behind.

"The Wii is a great console and does a lot of unique things really well, but DLC is a less integral part of the Wii user experience," he explained.

While unable to give a precise figure, Rigopulos said "almost everyone" with their console hooked up to a console network had proven willing to buy DLC.

"It’s very high relative to other games with add-on content," he said.

The executive said he split from MTV was unlikely to raise issue getting new music onto the service.

"IThe bulk of the music we released in early 2011 was actually selected and put into the pipeline late last year before the sale. Now we’re going it alone, and fans will be getting their first glimpse this month at some of the music that the independent Harmonix has been working to bring to Rock Band," he said.

"I don’t expect any dramatic changes to how we select music – well, I doubt you will see any more SpongeBob SquarePants packs."

Rock Band 3, which supports keyboard and pro mode, is the latest game in the original band franchise. Upcoming DLC plans for the next month include the Foo Fighters, Ozzy Osbourne and Lady Gaga.

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Rock Band

iOS, PS3, Xbox 360, PS2, Nintendo Wii

Rock Band 3

PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS

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Brenna Hillier avatar

Brenna Hillier

Contributor

Based in Australia and having come from a lengthy career in the Aussie games media, Brenna worked as VG247's remote Deputy Editor for several years, covering news and events from the other side of the planet to the rest of the team. After leaving VG247, Brenna retired from games media and crossed over to development, working as a writer on several video games.

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