The Beatles: Rock Band is just what the traditional console video game industry ordered — a game with broad appeal that could help turn around this year’s anemic sales.
The game is enjoying an enormous wave of publicity, thanks to interviews that the surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr — as well as Beatles widows Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono — are doing with outlets such as Entertainment Tonight. When the game arrives on Wednesday in stores, it will be very hard not to have heard of it. For the video-game challenged, a remastered CD version of the Beatles song collection is being released on the same day. If everything clicks right, this game could be one of the biggest mass market titles of the decade.
Like other rhythm games, you use faux guitars, drums and microphones to mimic the songs playing on the video game console. The Beatles themselves are animated in 3-D and play famous locations such as the Cavern Club, Shea Stadium, the Beatles’ Abbey Road studio, and fantasy environments known as “dreamscapes.”
It took years to secure a deal and develop the game, but the payoff could be big. The game launches on the symbol-ladened 9-9-09 date — some 40 years after the Beatles broke up. Reviewers from the Detroit Free Press to the Los Angeles Times have given it a thumbs up. This morning, video game critic Seth Schiesel of the New York Times wrote, “The Beatles: Rock Band is nothing less than a cultural watershed, one that may prove only slightly less influential than the band’s famous appearance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ in 1964. By reinterpreting an essential symbol of one generation in the medium and technology of another, The Beatles: Rock Band provides a transformative experience. In that sense it may be the most important video game yet made.”
Older gamers can’t wait to get their hands on the 45 Beatles songs that have never been available in a music game before. It remains to be seen if their younger kids who don’t know the Beatles will also embrace the game, which is being distributed by Electronic Arts.
The game was made by MTV Networks’ Harmonix division in conjunction with the surviving Beatles themselves, who insisted on high standards. For their participation, the game companies have paid dearly. MTV apparently paid the Beatles $10 million upfront and have promised royalties that could amount to $40 million, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Music video games have generated $4 billion since Guitar Hero invigorated the genre in 2006. But the category has stalled somewhat this year. But the Beatles: Rock Band will likely fix that problem and then some. Rival Activision Blizzard is also launching Guitar Hero 5, DJ Hero, and Band Hero.
The Beatles game carries a hefty price. Retailers are selling a limited edition “premium bundle” for $249 with a guitar, drum controller, a microphone and a mike stand — all of it modeled after the Beatles’ own gear. You can pay $149.99 if you don’t want all of the limited edition goodies. The game is available on the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, and the Sony PlayStation 3.
You can buy the game separately for $59.99 if you already have your own music game equipment. And you can buy additional guitar controllers modeled after George Harrison’s Gretsch Duo Jet guitar and John Lennon’s Rickenbacker. both sold separately for $99.99. Yes, everybody involved with this game is going to be rocking all the way to the bank.