CAMBRIDGE, MA – March 30, 2007 – Harmonix, developer of the blockbuster Guitar Hero franchise, MTV: Music Television, a division of MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), and Electronic Arts, (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced Rock Band, an all-new platform for music fans and gamers to interact with music like never before. Rock Band will allow gamers to perform music from the world's biggest rock artists with their friends as a virtual band using drum, bass/lead guitar and microphone peripherals, in addition to offering deep online connectivity. Built on unprecedented deals with the world's biggest record labels and music publishers, the music featured in Rock Band will span all genres of rock and include many of the master recordings from the biggest songs and artists of all time. Rock Band is slated for release on PLAYSTATION 3 computer entertainment system and Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft in Holiday 2007.

The leading music publishers – EMI Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music – are allowing unrivaled access to their catalogs of incredible songs for use in Rock Band. The record labels – EMI Recorded Music, Hollywood Records, Rhino Entertainment (Warner Music Group), Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group – have agreed to supply master recordings by their renowned artists for use in the game.

Harmonix forms Rock Band
New game from Guitar Hero maker to feature guitar, drum, microphone peripherals, master recordings from major labels; game due on PS3, 360 later this year.
By Tim Surette, GameSpot
Posted Apr 2, 2007 6:02 am PT

Nobody has rocked the game industry quite like Harmonix Music Systems. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based game company is focused squarely on music and rhythm games, and it has churned out Guitar Hero, one of the most popular new franchises of any genre, with the aid of publisher RedOctane.

The band broke up somewhat abruptly at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo when RedOctane, which owned the rights to the Guitar Hero name, was purchased by Activision for $100 million. A few months later, Harmonix was bought outright by MTV Networks, and at GDC 2007, EA announced that it would be distributing the next Harmonix-made game through its EA Partners program.

While it was known that the Guitar Hero franchise would live on through Activision-owned Neversoft, Harmonix has kept the volume down on its next project...until now.

Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos explains Rock Band in his own words.

Harmonix, MTV Networks, and Electronic Arts today officially announced Rock Band. The music-based game will do Guitar Hero two better by featuring guitar, drum, and microphone peripherals, proving rock and roll requires more than just someone who can handle the axe. Rock Band is scheduled to be available for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this holiday season.

Like Guitar Hero, Rock Band will feature licensed music. Thanks largely in part to its new relationship with MTV, Harmonix was able to wrangle multitrack master recordings from the catalogs of some of the biggest record labels in the business. On board to offer access to their portfolios are EMI Music Publishing, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Hollywood Records, and Warner Chappell Music. It is currently unknown how much from each music publisher will be available to Harmonix, but the emphasis going forward will be to work with the artists themselves.

Little is known about the gameplay at this time, but online interaction will be vital to the experience. Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos told GameSpot, "In addition to the music that ships with the game, we have very big plans for building out a huge library of online expansion content." Rigopulos also said that some content will "very likely" be free.


Cowbell players need not apply.

As for the controllers, the guitar peripheral will control the bass and lead guitar portions, a microphone will be used for vocals, and a drum peripheral will provide the beats. Rigopulos says the drum is "a really impressive piece of hardware. I'm a drummer myself, so we weren't going to settle for anything less than something that felt like a real instrument." Harmonix is still working out the details of how the peripherals will ship.

When asked if wannabe rock stars would be able to go online and seek out other musicians to play with, Rigopulos excitedly said, "Absolutely. The whole experience is actually about reaching out to other people and forming a band together and that collaborative experience...to form a band and rise from obscurity to fame."

The team behind Rock Band sees the project as more than just a simple game; they see it as a new platform for experiencing music. "We're at the very front of what will be a major transformation in music entertainment," said Rigopulos. "I really believe that four or five years from now, this kind of active participation in music making is going to be how people expect to experience the music that they love. Rock Band is a huge first step in that direction, but the sky's the limit in terms of the span of genres we eventually intend to reach with this."

Actually, they have stated that this will be released on the Wii.

Absolutely, we will at some time bring Rock Band to every console of significance and in doing so we will customize and tailor the play experience to take into account the weakness of the console and the strengths of the consoles. I think (the Wii) is something that holds enormous potential for music games.

This has a huge potential to be a trainwreck.

or it could be the greatest game ever.
no inbetween.

E3 07: Metallica, album downloads to rock Rock Band
Upcoming rhythm game to offer full-length albums, starting with The Who's Who's Next?; Song count now at 16 with Rush, Bon Jovi, and Stone Temple Pilots jumping on bandwagon; "Enter Sandman" also to be featured in the game.

SANTA MONICA, Calif.--The Battle of the Bands is officially on. Yesterday, the Neversoft-developed Guitar Hero III revealed the python-enthused former Guns N' Roses fretter Slash would rock on a variety of unlockable guitars. Today, original Guitar Hero developer Harmonix fired back with the announcement that it will offer not just hit singles for gamers to play, but entire full-length albums from multiple labels.

The first band to receive the digital conversion will be classic British rockers The Who. Gamers will be able to form a virtual cover band playing guitar, hitting the drums, and singing along to the band's widely acclaimed 1971 album Who's Next. The album should hit soon after the game's release this fall, with new content planned on a weekly basis. For those a bit rusty on their classic rock, the full track list for the album follows:

The Who's Who's Next:

"Baba O' Riley"
"Bargain"
"Love Ain't for Keepin'"
"My Wife (Entwistle)"
"The Song Is Over"
"Getting in Tune"
"Going Movile"
"Behind Blue Eyes"
"Won't Get Fooled Again"

Harmonix also announced the first 15 songs from the retail edition of Rock Band. A glance at the list reveals a wide array of rock subgenres and decades represented, from David Bowie and Black Sabbath to The Hives and The Strokes.

Piling on the announcements, Harmonix also revealed that Steven Van Zandt had signed on to chief Rock Band's music advisory board. In addition to appearing in the HBO gangster drama The Sopranos, Van Zandt is a member of Bruce Springsteen backing band E Street Band. Van Zandt also hosts the weekly syndicated radio show Little Steven's Underground Garage, which showcases up-and-coming sub-genre rock bands, and is a program director for the Sirius Satellite Radio network.

But wait, there's more. Hoping to toll the bell on its competition, Harmonix revealed the Grammy-winning "Enter Sandman" from Metallica's 1991 Black album will be included in Rock Band's initial lineup shipping with the game. Announced at the end of EA's press conference, Kathy Vrabeck also made mention that a "substantial" number of songs from Metallica's catalog are slated to appear in the game.

The first 16 songs from Rock Band are listed below, with the new songs in bold:

Artist - Song (asterisk indicates a cover version of a song):

The Who - "Won't Get Fooled Again"
Mountain - "Mississippi Queen"*
David Bowie - "Suffragette City"
Black Sabbath - "Paranoid"*
Blue Oyster Cult - "Don't Fear the Reaper"
The Ramones - "Rockaway Beach"
Rush - "Tom Sawyer"*
Bon Jovi - "Wanted Dead or Alive"
Nirvana - "In Bloom"
Stone Temple Pilots - "Vasoline"
Weezer - "Say It Ain't So"
Foo Fighters - "Learn to Fly"
The Hives - "Main Offender"
The Strokes - "Reptilia"
Queens of the Stone Age - "Go With the Flow"
Metallica - "Enter Sandman"

those content downloads are going to be so expensive