Next Week On Rock Band: White Stripes & Futureheads [Harmonix]

MTV Games and Harmonix put a little more Jack and Meg in your copies of Rock Band, Rock Band 2 and LEGO Rock Band, a trio of new tracks from The White Stripes (and more) arriving next week. That includes the radio friendly White Stripes tracks “Seven Nation Army” and “Fell In Love With A Girl.” Joining The White Stripes in the Rock Band music store next week are The James Gang and The Futureheads, the latter a fine English post-punk rock band that is worth checking out. Pricing on the following songs is… $1.99 USD, £.99 UK, €1.49 EU (160 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360) per track. If you’d prefer to buy The White Stripes Pack, that’ll be $5.49, £2.49 UK, €3.99 EU (440 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360). Tracks marked with a + are LEGO Rock Band compatible. The Futureheads – “Decent Days & Nights” + The Futureheads – “Hounds of Love” + The James Gang – “Walk Away” + The White Stripes – “Fell in Love with a Girl” + The White Stripes – “Seven Nation Army” The White Stripes – “You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)” + These tracks are a mere 99 cents. Neil Peart – “The Hockey Theme” + * Shaimus – “All of This” + * Shaimus – “Tie You Down” + *

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Next Week On Rock Band: White Stripes & Futureheads [Harmonix]

The Rock Band Network Music Store Opens to Public Today

Harmonix today announced that the Rock Band Network Music Store opens to the public today, giving Rock Band fans and music lovers a new avenue to discover music and providing musicians and labels lots of all-new opportunities.

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The Rock Band Network Music Store Opens to Public Today

The Rock Band Network Goes Live With 100 Plus New Tracks [Harmonix]

In January, Harmonix launched the tools needed for artists to publish their songs on the Rock Band Network . Today, the Rock Band Network Store opens to the public, with more than 100 new songs for fans to purchase and play. The Rock Band Network Store is now online, with new track from artists ranging from 3 Inches of Blood to Zack Wilson now available for download. New tracks will be debuting on the Xbox 360 on a regular basis, with 30 days of exclusivity. A subset of standout tracks from the Xbox 360 will be made available to those playing on the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, which answers a question Totilo had when he previewed the service back in August . “The response to and interest in the Rock Band Network has been even greater than we originally expected,” said Alex Rigopulos, CEO and co-founder of Harmonix Music Systems. “We’re very excited about the number of bands and labels who have geared up to participate in the Rock Band Network, as well as the number of enthusiasts who have signed up to participate in the Peer Review and Playtest processes.” Check out Totilo’s article for a good overview of the process involved in getting your music onto the Rock Band Network Music Store. Below you’ll find the full day-one track listing for the Rock Band Network Music Store. See anything you like? I’m going to be playing Jonathan Coulton and Flogging Molly all day long and you can’t stop me. 3 Inches of Blood – Battles and Brotherhood Alias Unknown – Top Back Amberian Dawn – He Sleeps in a Grove Amberian Dawn – River of Tuoni Andrew Buch – Trippolette Audio Fiction – Race The Hourglass Bif Naked – Sick Blackmarket – Tongue Twister Typo Bojibian – Still There C&O – We Are the Best Chaunce DeLeon and The Fountain of Choof – Tadpole Search and Rescue Children of Nova – The Complexity of Light Color Theory – If Not Now When Dear and the Headlights – Talk About Despised Icon – Day of Mourning DnA’s Evolution – The Heist Error 404 feat. CJ Watson – If Trucks Drank Beer Fake Shark-Real Zombie! – Angel Lust Fake Shark-Real Zombie! – Horses in Heaven Fake Shark-Real Zombie! – Running for the Razors Fake Shark-Real Zombie! – Sestri Levante Five Finger Death Punch – Burn it Down Flogging Molly – Drunken Lullabies (Live) Flogging Molly – Requiem for a Dying Song Foreword – Watch It All Go Down Free Spirit – Far Away from Heaven Full-Source – End Quote Full-Source – It’s Not You, It’s Everyone Full-Source – Red Sky At Morn Furly – Icarus’ Song Gandhi – Arigato Giant Target – In Memories Giant Target – Signs Glass Hammer – Hyperbole Glass Hammer – Sleep On Heaven Ablaze – Parhelia In This Moment – Mechanical Love James William Roy – Paper Valentines Jonathan Coulton – Creepy Doll Jonathan Coulton – Ikea Jonathan Coulton – The Future Soon KMFDM – A Drug Against War KMFDM – Juke Joint Jezebel Kristin Hersh – Fortune Kristin Hersh – Mississippi Kite Lacuna Coil – Survive Lead the Dead – Rip’er Longwave – No Direction Marillion – Whatever Is Wrong With You Matter in the Medium – Persistence of Vision MC Frontalot – Goth Girls Nick Gallant – Inside Out Nick Gallant – Turn Yourself Around Of Last Resort – Fade Away of Montreal – Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse Pink Flag – Nancy Drew Ron Wasserman – Fight Back Rose of Jericho – Buried Cold Scratching The Itch – Lemon Juice Scratching The Itch – The Buddy Disease Scratching The Itch – You’re My Everything Senses Fail – Lady in a Blue Dress Skeletonwitch – Crushed Beyond Dust Skindred – Stand for Something Speck – Grumpytown Speck – VP of Booty Reports Stars of Boulevard – Limousine Stephanie Hatfield and Hot Mess – Can I Stay Steve and Lindley Band – Backyard Buildyard Steve Vai – For the Love of God (Live) Steve Vai – Get the Hell Out of Here Steve Vai – The Attitude Song Stroke 9 – Kick Some Ass ‘09 Stroke 9 – Little Black Backpack ‘09 Suicide Silence – Disengage Surprise Me Mr. Davis – Sissyfuss The Cold Goodnight – Give The Dirty Love Band – Moonboy The Everybody – You Got That The Fisticuffs – Liverpool Judies The Hold Steady – Sequestered in Memphis The Humans – It’s Good The Kimberly Trip – California The Main Drag – Cease and Desist The Main Drag – Don’t Let Me Down (Slowly) The Main Drag – Dove Nets The Main Drag – Homosuperior The Main Drag – How We’d Look On Paper The Main Drag – Love During Wartime The Main Drag – Megatron The Main Drag – Talk Them Down The Main Drag – Teeth, Face, Outerspace The Main Drag – Tricky Girl The Main Drag – What’s Your Favorite Dinosaur? The Shins – Australia The Slip – Children of December The Slip – Even Rats Ultra Saturday – Not My Fault Ultra Saturday – Superhero! WaveGroup Feat. Becca Neun – Liquid Smog (StompBox Remix) Wounded Soul – Rx You Shriek – Lilith in Libra You Shriek – No Heroes Zack Wilson – Another California Song Zack Wilson – Ox The Rock Band Network Music Store Goes Live!!! [Harmonix]

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The Rock Band Network Goes Live With 100 Plus New Tracks [Harmonix]

Disturbed and More Come to Rock Band DLC Store this Week

Harmonix and MTV Games today announced that a three pack of songs from rockers Disturbed, as well as singles from Silversun Pickups, The Mother Hips and TRUSTcompany, will be added this week to the Rock Band music DLC store.

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Disturbed and More Come to Rock Band DLC Store this Week

Disturbed and More Come to Rock Band DLC Store this Week

Harmonix and MTV Games today announced that a three pack of songs from rockers Disturbed, as well as singles from Silversun Pickups, The Mother Hips and TRUSTcompany, will be added this week to the Rock Band music DLC store.

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Disturbed and More Come to Rock Band DLC Store this Week

Disturbed and More Come to Rock Band DLC Store this Week

Harmonix and MTV Games today announced that a three pack of songs from rockers Disturbed, as well as singles from Silversun Pickups, The Mother Hips and TRUSTcompany, will be added this week to the Rock Band music DLC store.

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Disturbed and More Come to Rock Band DLC Store this Week

HIM, Marilyn Mason, and The Police Head to Rock Band DLC

Harmonix and MTV Games = announced that a three pack of songs from Finnish rockers HIM, as well as singles from KSM, Marilyn Manson, One Night Only and The Police, will be added next week to the Rock Band Music Store on Xbox 360.

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HIM, Marilyn Mason, and The Police Head to Rock Band DLC

Bobby Kotick, Warm and Fuzzy, Defends Notorious No-Fun Statements [Dice 2010]

Bobby Kotick, head of Activision, thought he was Luke, not Vader. And he didn’t mean that thing about wanting to make game-making no fun. “I don’t know how this happened, but all my life I was the rebel flying the Millennium Falcon or the X-Wing fighter and suddenly I wake up and I’m on board the Death Star.” That’s the second quip Activision’s oft-vilified CEO said to start his talk at the DICE gaming convention today. His first was a joke about the height of his microphone, set not for his height (he’s short) but for former EA chief Larry Probst. Mistakes, Kotick has made a few and he was ready to admit them today. Most notorious was a late 2009 comment he made that seemed to cement his position as more Vader thank Luke. No, he said today, he didn’t mean to sound like, his words, “a dick.” In September he had told a group of investors : “The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.” Today, he said, after describing Activision as a company striving for greatness, “Sometimes that commitment to excellence, well, you can come across as being like a dick. And when I say things like ‘taking the fun out of making video games,’ it was a line that has been often-quoted lately, but it was a line I used for investors. It was mainly because i wanted to somehow come across in a humorous way that we were responsible, in the way we made our games in that it wasn’t some wild west, lack of process exercise and that we really did give some thought to the capital being used to provide a return of investment to shareholders. So I say things like ‘taking the fun out of video games’ knowing full well that all we’re actually trying to do is keep the fun in the process because, as most of you know, when you’re getting into crunch time it becomes really difficult to meet those milestones or get things polished the way you would like, that isn’t a lot of fun. That is not what I meant by it.” The Kotick speech today was one of of putting on the good face of Activision and the man at the podium here at the Red Rock Casino. Kotick admitted that he’s sometimes been so much the businessman that he’s cost his shareholders money by not remembering to get close to game creators. “Sometime what winds up happening when you are 50,000 feet above is you can get insulated from that creative passion.” Blizzard? He should have bought them sooner. He had thought that a subscription version of World of Warcraft was “the silliest thing” he’d ever heard of. Maxis? “When Maxis was getting sold everyone was being sold on Sim City 2000 being this fantastic product that was incredibly late and wasn’t coming out.” Kotick went to visit some executives at the company. In another office, Will Wright was working on a game called Jefferson. Kotick didn’t meet with Wright. No one could explain the game to him. What Kotick missed was the game that would become the Sims. For a CEO who has been vilified as a business-first enemy of video game creativity, Kotick wanted to reveal that he has made mistakes staying too distant from passionate game creators. The most vivid example he gave was how he handled the purchase of the Guitar Hero brand and blew off the talented studio, Harmonix, that had built them, prioritizing the Guitar Hero franchise owner Red Octane and handing the development of the series to Activision-run Neversoft. “When we were buying Guitar Hero, or buying Red Octane, the makers of Guitar Hero, we knew about Harmonix,” Kotick said. “We had always known them as sort of somewhat a failed developer of music games.” Activision decided that their own studio, Neversoft, made good games, so they would make Guitar Hero from now on, not the Boston-based Harmonix. He said that had Activision met with Harmonix, things would have been very different. That’s Bobby Kotick saying sorry. Note that Harmonix, now owned by MTV Games and creating the Rock Band games, has been distributed by Activision rival EA since then. That distribution deal is set to expire next month. Kotick was warm and fuzzy, zip-up sweater over polo shirt, no suit and not much business talk. He was reminiscing in his 20s, the ex history of art major spending about $400,000 for a stake in Activision, a company he was worried was losing its soul. He wanted to explain that he was a gamer originally, then a businessman, one with apologies for some of the creators he may have ignored or insulted — and of course a company to brag about now. “I loved Zork,” he said of his gaming days. “I loved Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I loved the whole idea behind Activision.” That idea was that it was the anti-Atari, the company that rebelled against the corporate attitude of Atari and would champion creators. He recalled scheming in the late 80s with his friend who had started a hedge fund to try to buy Commodore. “I tried for a bout a year to acquire control of Commodore,” he said. He thought it could be turned into a great 16-bit console. The Commodore console could be better than the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System being sold in Japan at the time, he recalled himself thinking. Kotick went from gamer to game maker to businessman. Kotick said he’s not playing many games anymore. He’s a single dad with three daughters and is wary of the kind of developer he would become, knowing his addictive personality (He confessed he is “addicted to food”). Did he used to be an avid gamer? “I still have callouses from Defender. I still wake up in the middle of the night and see the words ‘Use key to open door.’” Does he play now? Not much: “If I was regularly playing Modern Warfare 2 I would not be able to stop and it would be at the expense of all my other responsibilities.” Kotick said that Activision is a company that supports creators and champions vision. He took barely-veiled shots at EA, comparing his interest and efforts in the past to help start companies such as Jamdat and Pandemic with the eventual fates of those companies now folded into EA and, in the case of Pandemic, shut down as an independent entity. “If you have a company and you want to protect your creative freedom and the integrity of the creative process, if you want to retain your identity and culture, if you want the support of the mothership and the resources of the mothership, we’re a really great mothership. But if you want to sell out and move on, there are definitely other companies to talk to.” Kotick made no mention of the deep cuts Activision announced earlier this week nor of the couple of hundred developers who were let go. He focused on projecting a game developer-friendly image and announced the start of a $500,000 independent games development contest.

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Bobby Kotick, Warm and Fuzzy, Defends Notorious No-Fun Statements [Dice 2010]

Otis Redding and More Coming to Rock Band DLC This Week

Harmonix today announced that a five pack of songs from Otis Redding, known as the “King of Soul,” as well as singles from All Time Low, Alphabeat, Brian Setzer and The Chemical Brothers, will be added to the Rock Band Music Store.

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Otis Redding and More Coming to Rock Band DLC This Week

If All You Need Is Love, Then You’re In Luck [Harmonix]

The Beatles’ classic “All You Need is Love,” once exclusive to the Xbox 360 version of The Beatles: Rock Band, is finally making its way to the PlayStation 3 and Wii, with its charitable intentions intact. Released for the Xbox 360 in September of last year, “All You Need is Love,” quickly became the fastest selling song in Rock Band history , perhaps due in part to all proceeds from the sale going to the Doctors Without Borders charity. Now the song is coming to the Rock Band Music Store for the Wii and PS3, with all proceeds once again going to the charity organization. “All You Need is Love” is due out for the Wii on February 17th, with PS3 players waiting until March 4th to grab the music.

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If All You Need Is Love, Then You’re In Luck [Harmonix]

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