Roger Daltry, the lead singer of The Who, spilled the beans today that there’s a version of Rock Band coming that will be based on songs from his band.
In an interview with a newspaper, Daltry said of Rock Band, “The game, yeah, yeah, they’re going to be doing a Who one next year. There is one planned.”
That’s pretty clear. But it isn’t necessarily a confirmation. MTV Networks, Harmonix and Electronic Arts just launched The Beatles Rock Band in September. The game is the No. 1 music game on the market now, but sales weren’t nearly as high as expected given the hype around the game. So it’s not yet clear that building a Rock Band game around a single band is a spectacular idea.
A Rock Band spokeswoman at MTV Games said, “We’re working closely with The Who on what’s next, but don’t have anything new to announce at this time.”
The Rock Band franchise debuted in 2007, chasing after Activision Blizzard’s Guitar Hero series. But this season, The Beatles Rock Band is outselling Guitar Hero 5. While the overall market is one of the newer genres in games, players appear to be getting tired of the familiar game play where you strum faux guitars.
I would be happy to see The Who showing up on Rock Band, and I was in the audience last year when The Who staged a concert at the annual E3 video game show in a Rock Band 2 event sponsored by MTV Games, Harmonix and Electronic Arts. And the band already has a lot of downloadable content already available for Rock Band, including “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Pinball Wizard,” “Baba O’ Riley,” “My Generation,” “Who Are You,” and “Behind Blue Eyes.”
On music games generally, Daltry said, “Anything that gets non-musical people interested in music is wonderful.”