Rock Band has been very, very good to Mad Catz so far, and it's only getting better. Complimenting it's excellent line of music peripherals for the Xbox 360 version, the company has just entered into a multi-year licensing agreement agreement with Nintendo to create and distribute peripherals for the Wii version of the game. Two products for Nintendo's console will be introduced in early 2009 - the portable drum kit, and the Wii version of the bass guitar I've fallen in love with.

"We are thrilled to enter into this agreement with Nintendo," said Darren Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mad Catz. "Together we will provide Rock Band fans the opportunity to enhance their gameplay with Mad Catz' premium instruments for Nintendo's extremely popular Wii system."

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Activision and RedOctane has been working furiously to deal with issues Guitar Hero World Tour players have been having with their over and under-sensitive drum kits, and to that end they've released a Guitar Hero World Tour Drum Tuning Kit, as promised back on Tuesday. The kit takes the form of a 10MB PC application, which features a simple interface that allows you to assign a sensitivity level from 1-20 for each pad and the pedal.

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Reports are popping up all over the internet regarding sensitivity issues with the new drum controller that comes packaged with Activision's Guitar Hero World Tour. Some complain the drums are too sensitive; others that they aren't sensitive enough, and then there's folks like me whose green one rattles when you hit it, but that will have to be addressed another time. If only there was some sort of drum tuning kit that would allow owners to optimise the drums to their liking. Oh look, an official statement from Activision.

We have learned that certain drum kit controllers manufactured for Guitar Hero World Tour have sensitivity issues. We believe that these controllers are limited to ones in the earlier manufacturing stages. While we believe that this was an isolated manufacturing issue, we are stepping our efforts to randomly test our drum kit controllers so customers can be assured they work properly. In the event any consumers do experience problems with their drum kit controllers associated with sensitivity issues, Activision will soon be offering a drum tuning kit that will enable players to fully optimise their drums.

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Anyone who co-habits with a non-gamer - be they partner, parent or pissed off flatmate - will have had the "Why is this shit in front of the TV" conversation.

Rock Band takes this to new levels of lounge clutter - the drum kit in particular is a real carpet-hog, It's even worse if you have to lug it across town to your bandmates' place.

Purveyors of kerwality peripherals Mad Catz have a possible solution - this portable Drum Kit is basically just the 'skins' from the drum pads that you can lay on any surface you like. It's not going to feel as satisfying as thwacking the real thing, but with the included drum pedal and 'noise-reduction' sticks you might avoid another tidying up argument for a mere $59.

Portable Rock Band drum kit rids your living room of clutter [Dvice via ChipChick via SlipperyBrick]

We've gotten a flood of emails about this so here goes. The Rock Band stand alone drum kits have been spotted in the wild from Best Buy to Circuit City. They are retailing for $79.99 but the single guitars have yet to be found. Combined with the purchase of the game on it's own your still looking at over a hundred bucks so unless your looking to launch your career as a solo drummer you're probably better off just buying the bundle since many places seem to be selling it at a reduced rate.

[Thanks to Blake for the photo]

Back in November we showed you Rock Band drums hacked to allow for PC input, and now Andrew Rudson utilises said hack in a nifty little program called Drum Machine, which allows you to assign samples sounds to each of the four drums and the pedals, which you can then play as if they were a real, somewhat limited set of drums. The program comes with a variety of drum sounds included, with support for up to 1,024 different WAV files. Best of all, you can record your tracks for playback, sharing, or importing into your favorite mixing program. The only downside is that the program currently only works with the Xbox 360 version, though Andrew plans a patch very soon to support the PS3 and PS2 drum sets. Nice work!
Drum Machine for Windows [AndrewRudson.com - Thanks Jason!]

I've been trying to keep Kotaku the place to go for the latest, breaking Rock Band drum silencing mod news. And while I'll surely break down and post more in a day or so, for now I'm taking a vow of silence.

...right after I finish this post. Are you interested in quieting your Rock Band drums and rocking out some airbrushed flaming skulls at the same time? Good! Because such a life is now available on eBay. While not the sexiest modification we've ever seen, these peel-off replacement heads feature that touch of homemade that will make you look like a real starving artist who hasn't understood the world since the 80s. Hit the jump for a bonus picture, this time with even more skull goodness.

Rock Band Drums Skulls [eBay] Thanks Steve!

See this picture? Learn it. Live it. Love it. That's how you really hold a drumstick. Or it's one way at least. Sometimes I prefer holding my sticks in the traditional style and pretending that I'm one of those Civil War drummers while rocking out to Maps.

The bottom line is that we're all going to look a bit douchey while playing Rock Band. But some of us can pretend that our alter egos (which only come out at night, btw) are hard rocking maniacs. You see, we only have those Rock Band drums sitting around because they can hold a boatload of coke (which we're out of because we snort it the instant we get it, btw), and they are the next best thing to our motorcycles (currently in the shop, btw) for fornication. Hit the link for three different, fully authorised ways to properly hold sticks.

Learn How To Hold Drumsticks [via gamingtoday]

A few days ago, we posted a Rock Band drums mod promising to quiet the loud experience of actual drumming that sometimes gets in the way of Rock Band's (virtual) soundtrack. Apparently some people actually listen to our mindless rantings (as we try to perfect the legendary art of typing in tongues), because one of our readers tested the method and found it to work quite well:

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Rock Band's drum kit is pretty great. But no happiness is free, and aside from the financial costs, the drum kit can get loud. It gets so loud, in fact, that I'll sometimes wear headphones to hear the guitar track over my wife's drumming. But some modders have come up with a solution that doesn't look too difficult to employ.

By applying one layer of self-adhesive rubber and another of self-adhesive, coloured felt, they claim to maintain full responsiveness while cutting down on the kit sound by 70%—by highly scientific measurement, we're sure. For those who prefer to drum silent ninja style, it's a cheap and easy mod that makes your drum kit look a lot like a Twister board. And if the drums break, at least you have that.

Time for Rock Band Arts & Crafts [generationgamerz] Thanks Al!