rock band

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Rock Band, Rock Band 2, Rock Band 3, Harmonix, video games, music games, American Pie, Don McLean, Deep Purple, Highway StarToday is a bittersweet occasion in the annals of video game history: Harmonix is releasing the final downloadable content for its Rock Band series.

Since the first Rock Band came out in late 2007 the studio had promised new songs weekly for downloadable purchase and play.  It kept that promise for 281 consecutive weeks: far, far longer than most players probably expected.  Maybe even longer than it has been profitable.  Hard to find that kind of reliability in any modern industry, much less the video game one.

Fittingly, the last tune that players can get for Rock Band is Don McLean’s 1971 classic “American Pie”.  And were I the sort I’d be drinking whiskey and rye…

I only played Rock Band and Rock Band 2, and I have to agree with what Brett Makedonski has beautifully written on Destructoid: this series had an immense impact on ...

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We already knew that ROCK BAND 3 is scheduled to retail later this year… but I am already drooling about this one even more: Rock Band: “Weird Al” Yankovic has just been announced by Harmonix and MTV Games! It’ll publish on October 27th, just over seven months from now.

Here’s the press release that IGN Games posted a short while ago…

ROCK BAND: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC WILL BRING PRINCE OF PARODY TO POPULAR PARTY GAME

Harmonix and MTV Games is proud to announce ROCK BAND: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC is in production for a release date of October 27th, 2010.

The latest in the popular Rock Band series of music and rhythm video games, ROCK BAND: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC is a homage to the unique character and career of “Weird Al” Yankovic: the best-selling comedy musical artist in history.

Much like last year’s critically acclaimed and commercially successful ROCK BAND: THE

...
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Today finally sees the release of the much-anticipated The Beatles: Rock Band from Harmonix and MTV Games. The latest installment in the popular Rock Band music game series lets you and up to three friends re-live the career of the Fab Four from Liverpool right in your living room!

I don’t have the game yet (it’s available for all three major consoles) although I am looking forward to getting it at some point. However, for those of you who have bought it already, I’ve been wondering about something ever since this game was first announced…

Does The Beatles: Rock Band let you play the “John has a girlfriend” concert? Does a digital avatar of Yoko appear onscreen and break up the band all over again? Will your game data get erased when the Beatles go their separate ways?

(Probably not, but that would be so funny if it did 🙂...

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Are you an independent musician looking to promote your work? Might wanna check this out: you’ll soon be able to add your own original music to the popular music game Rock Band! Indie artists and bands will use Microsoft’s XNA Creator’s Club to mesh the song’s MIDI file to the format used by the game. The work will then be submitted to other Creator’s Club programmers for critique and then must meet final approval by Harmonix and MTV Games. After they go live the songs will sell between 50 cents and 3 dollars, with the artists getting 30% of the cut! Not a bad business model at all, and there’s the potential for some great publicity for indie musicians....

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In the past few days lots of confirmed (and some not quite confirmed but it’s looking good) info has come out about Rock Band 2, Harmonix and MTV Games’ follow-up to last year’s smash hit music game Rock Band.

According to a press release by Harmonix, Rock Band 2 is going to be completely backward compatible with the peripherals and downloaded songs from Rock Band. Which is good news for people like those of us in the Knight household who have been purchasing dozens of new tracks through Xbox Live Marketplace (speaking of which, Lisa and I have gotten pretty good at Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville”).

And speaking of instruments, Ars Technica has word that Rock Band 2 is going to boast much improved hardware, like a wireless drum set (with metal-reinforced pedal) and a far better guitar – also wireless – than the one that came packaged with ...

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… it won’t have downloaded content or online play.

Harmonix announced today that the wildly popular music game will be released for the Nintendo Wii on June 22. It will have five “bonus” songs. This supposedly is in lieu of the online play feature and ability to download new songs that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions already have.

A lot of people will be glad to know that Rock Band is getting ported to the Wii. But how long is that going to last when these details about the release become widely known? To exclude the downloadable content feature and online play is an insanely bad move by Harmonix. From a business standpoint, it makes no sense at all! Nintendo Wii is the best-selling video game system on the market today, consistently outpacing both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Now bear in mind that for ...

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Give it up for Harmonix: they are definitely one software company that listens to its fan base. Yesterday they pushed a patch for their hit game Rock Band that addresses several issues that players have been having. And with the update comes one very cool innovation: Rock Band Store, an in-game way to purchase new songs without having to leave the game for Xbox Live Marketplace or the PlayStation Store.

I just installed the update and messed around with the game (the Xbox 360 version) and I am extremely pleased with what Harmonix has done with this update. The Rock Band Store even lets you preview songs that you might consider purchasing before doing so.

In addition to the Rock Band Store, the new patch fixes the random song lists bugs, tweaks the cap on fans in Band World Tour mode, improves some issues with the microphone (which was ...

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Last week I got Rock Band – Special Edition for our new Xbox 360. We finally got it out of the box last night and after getting the instruments put together (without a doubt the first video game that I’ve ever bought that has “some assembly required”) we started playing the game.

I can already tell that Rock Band is going to be one of our favorite video games for a long while to come: we’re having a blast with it! Lisa is getting really good on drums, and for once I’m not getting booed off stage while singing (“Don’t Fear the Reaper” is my best song so far). We haven’t done anything with the guitar yet. I’m gonna study the instructions some more, figure out just what the heck we’re doing here before we start really jamming with Rock Band.

And if you’ve ever played this before, you already ...

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