Sex, Drugs, Rockband

calgaryherald.com - NEW YORK — MTV Networks announced on Thursday a deal to use songs by 60s band The Beatles in a custom video game similar to its popular “Rock Band” video, marking the band’s first key plunge into digital music.

MTV Networks said there was no release date or sale price for the game, but that it was due to be ready for release around the holidays next year. Jeff Jones, chief executive of The Beatles Apple Corps Ltd, said the game would include “samples of the whole (music) catalogue.”

MTV Networks, owned by Viacom said the game was creatively conceived by former Beatles Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and the wives of late Beatles John Lennon and George Harrison, Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison.
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It has been announced that legendary band The Beatles are currently in talks with Activision and MTV, on trying to expand their licensing deal to include video games. This deal could be worth millions of pounds and could of course lead to their appearances on Activision’s Guitar Hero, or MTV’s Rock Band.
The report suggests that this deal could be reached within a matter of weeks, so it will be interesting to find out more specific information on this as regards to Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Not everything is straight forward though as all the master recordings of the songs are owned by company EMI, and would need to be approved by them first, while another company Apple Corps manages all of their business interests. These are probably the main reasons why we are yet to see any of the Beatles tracks on Rock Band yet.
It is an interesting time ahead though for the rhythm genre as it may not be long until we see some of the Beatles tracks gracing the likes of Rock Band or Guitar Hero. A recent post on PS3 Daily stated that Guitar Hero and Rock Band are now as popular as ever, as Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was the latest game to follow the current trend.
How many of you would like to see a dedicated Rock Band game based solely on The Beatles, I personally think it would be very popular, as it could target a whole new audience for the developers, not to mention, getting the younger generation playing classic rock music.