Beatles Backers Bet Badly, Sales Simply Simmer

Posted by | October 20, 2009

The Beatles: Rock Band was promised as a messiah that would lift video gaming from the depths of an industry slump, but instead, it moved only a merely respectable number of boxes for a top title. Figures come in at just under 600,000 copies for September. Sales are expected to continue, however, with upcoming DLC offerings and a growing awareness amongst the Your Parents market that the Beatles game exists.

I put it down to the characters in the game looking like rubber chickens with bowl cuts flopping around the screen.

Oh, and Halo 3: ODST sold 1.5 million boxes in the same month. Just throwing that out there.

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Beatles: Rock Band to Drop Sep. 9,Viacom Betting 10-Mil in Royalties on Sales

Posted by | September 1, 2009

Beatles: Rock BandI can safely say there is an end to the wasteland desert that was gaming these past months, as a cool ocean breeze wafts in from the coast. New titles have arrived on sailing ships from lands afar; Madden, Batman, and soon, the Beatles. Combined with price cuts on the Xbox 360 and PS3, gaming is set to surge ahead as the top consumer of our time, outpacing family, friends, and religion by a wide margin.

Beatles: Rock Band is an interesting title. The Beatles are, of course, the most powerful and moneymaking band in history. But the audience for this upcoming title, by and large, wasn’t even born yet when Yoko broke up the Beatles. It’s an open question if Our Gaming Generation will respond to a band they’ve never …

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Music Games Rise as Music Industry Falls, and Something About The Beatles

Posted by | August 30, 2009

Music games are an interesting story in the world of video gaming. Born from the niche genre of rhythm games, this new species evolved a spine of hardened rock & roll, and now it wades tall through the protozoic soup of those ancient seas. Now, music gaming showcases new bands, brings classic rock to those who might never have come to appreciate it, and, in the end, the muscled back of music gaming is straining with clenched tendons to carry the music industry as a whole.

Music sales have fallen, the industry itself — a bloating corpse-beast of greed and ego and control — is shaking under the weight of new channels for pumping music and videos directly into the public’s collective veins. Without their winding chains locking up every opening in the gates between musician and listener, the music industry can no longer support the …

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Rock Band Bags the Beatles

Posted by | October 30, 2008

Although the battle of the fake bands has been heating up for some time, Harmonix has taken things to an entirely new level by signing up the Beatles to their popular Rock Band series. The result will be a game pack that lets you pay good money to pretend to play the timeless Beatles classics that you’ve already paid good money for on tape, then CD, then a second CD after the dog chewed up the first.

“It gives me great pleasure to be part of the Beatles/Rock Band partnership,” said former Beatle Ringo Starr, “Once again, the gig I lucked into over 30 years ago will keep my aging, careerless ass in money.”

The computer company, Apple, who gave their blessing for this use of the Beatle’s music in the project could not be reached for a quote as they were too busy shoveling fistfuls of …

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