The Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band complete the album DLC pack for The Beatles: Rock Band is now available for the Xbox 360 and Wii, with the PlayStation 3 version arriving on Thursday. I’m looking forward to giving the new songs a go, if I can ever wrest my copy of the game away from my older brother. You hear that, Richard? I want my game back! Now more pretending to be asleep when I knock on your door. I can hear you singing. Sometimes I have nightmares.

Next week fans of The Beatles will be able to complete what the Rock Band titles started with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, “With A Little Help From My Friends”, “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”, “Getting Better” and “Good Morning Good Morning” with the final eight songs from the band’s eighth studio album. The aptly-titled “Fixing A Hole” joins “She’s Leaving Home”, “Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!”, “Within You Without You”, “When I’m Sixty-Four”, “Lovely Rita”, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” and “A Day In The Life” completing the album so popular it was made into a musical starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees.

The new tracks will be available on November 17 for the Xbox 360 and Wii and November 19 on the PlayStation 3. The full pack will run $US13.49 or 1080 Microsoft points, with individual songs running $US2 a pop.

The fact he mentions a third Rock Band should surprise only those who wake up every morning shocked to see the sun has risen. But the specifics, and why he’s involved in the project, those are a little more interesting.

“I’m working on ‘Rock Band 3′ and making the controllers more real so people can actually learn how to play music while playing the game,” he told the newspaper. “Give me a couple years, it’s going to happen.”

I don’t know. I enjoy playing Rock Band because I can’t play the guitar. If I wanted to learn how to play the guitar I’d, well… learn how to play the guitar.

The ever-changing Thenewno2 [Chicago Tribune]

And it didn’t take much, to be honest, as The Beatles: Rock Band footage looks pretty good with whatever Beatles song is put before it. The remaining tracks from “Abbey Road” are available to download as of this week.

Maybe it has something to do with Ringo’s moustache. Or maybe it’s the option to play “Golden Slumbers”/ “Carry That Weight”/ “The End” but $US17 doesn’t seem that high a price any more.

According to a boastful official announcement from Apple Corps, MTV Games and Harmonix, the winner of the monthly music game battle was The Beatles: Rock Band, the “#2 selling title across all genres by revenue in the U.S. for the month of September.” The Xbox 360 and Wii versions sold well enough to chart in the NPD’s top ten video games for the month, with the downloadable single “All You Need Is Love” racking up over 100,000 downloads.

The Beatles: Rock Band folks further rub their victory in Activision’s corporate face by pointing out that Guitar Hero 5 shipped on an additional platform (the PlayStation 2) and even included a copy of Guitar Hero: Van Halen thrown in for free.

It may have also been claimed that Scott Guthrie, president of MTV Games, could beat up Bobby Kotick, Activision CEO. Or it may not have been. Or was it? We may never know…

That’s the $US249 version, with Ringo Starr’s drums and Paul McCartney’s bass (plus microphone and stand). GamesIndustry.biz reports that Phillipe Dauman, the Viacom boss, told a conference yesterday that sales have exceeded internal expectations, to the tune of 25% of its inventory being sold in the first week.

“The special limited edition hardware sets that we have are selling really fast,” Dauman told the Goldman Sachs Communacopia XVIII Conference in New York, “and it looks to us that we’ll be selling out of that in November.”

Dauman added that the game’s sales have been, in particular, helped by the price cut on the PlayStation 3.

Should Dauman be right, it will be interesting to see if a bona fide holiday grey market can develop for the Beatles’ top-shelf bundle, considering the expectations of a poor holiday spending season overall, and the fact it’s not a console, just a very expensive version of a single game.

The Beatles Rock Band Sales “Exceeding Expectations” [GamesIndustry.biz]

Nowhere is this more evident than in music-themed video games. Titles like Guitar Hero 5, The Beatles: Rock Band and soon-to-be released DJ Hero all use real musicians, living and dead, to help create a stronger sense of realism.

But is that a good thing?

For the surviving members of The Beatles and their fans it seems to be.

The self-titled Rock Band game released to phenomenal reviews and delivered an experience that was solely devoted the band. The game, it seems, was an effort to not only give people a chance to play through their favourite Beatles hits, but to get a better sense of how The Beatles grew both us musicians and a band.

The same week that fans of the fab four were rejoicing in the singular experience of The Beatles: Rock Band, the widow, fans and band mates of late grunge icon Kurt Cobain were up in arms over his inclusion in Guitar Hero 5.

Prior to the game’s release, publisher Activision told Rolling Stone magazine that Courtney Love wasn’t just integral in bringing Cobain to life in the game, she was great to work with.

But in a frenzy of late-night Twitter updates a week after the game’s release, Love denied that she was happily involved in the project, posting 214 Tweets over a six-hour period decrying the game, Cobain’s inclusion in it and most hotly the ability to have the grunge singer perform other songs.

It’s this single feature, which allows gamers to unlock Cobain and have him sing everything from Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire to Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name, that seems to be the most upsetting to friends, fans and family.

Some critics too, were unhappy with it. Kotaku’s own review described the ability to reanimate the virtual corpses of Cobain and Johnny Cash and control them as marionettes in other people’s songs, as tacky and crude.

Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, the two surviving members of Nirvana, released a joint statement asking Activision to alter the game to prevent the virtual Cobain from performing songs that are not his own.

“Kurt Cobain wrote songs that hold a lot of meaning to people all over the world. We feel he deserves better.”

Activision, which had initially agreed to participate in this story, declined to respond to questions about the decision to include real-world musicians in games and to say whether they would change Cobain’s inclusion in Guitar Hero 5.

They did send along a prepared statement saying that the game had the necessary licensing rights from the Cobain estate in a “written agreement signed by Courtney Love to use Kurt Cobain’s likeness as a fully playable character in Guitar Hero 5,”

While Love didn’t respond to our requests for an interview, her attorney did, saying that while there was an agreement in place, it didn’t allow the sort of treatment Cobain is getting in the game.

“Ms. Cobain is extremely upset about Activision’s use of Mr. Cobain’s likeness to sing the songs of others in its Guitar Hero game,” Keith A. Fink, Love’s attorney, told Kotaku. “Activision was granted permission by Kurt’s trust solely to use his name and likeness. Activision was not given an unbridled right to use Mr. Cobain’s name and likeness. ”

“The agreement Activision has with the trust doesn’t allow them to use his likeness in ways that denigrate his image.”

Love’s response to Guitar Hero 5 is a far cry from the response The Beatles: Rock Band is getting from the family and surviving members of The Beatles.

Perhaps that’s because in the Rock Band game players can only perform as The Beatles in songs by The Beatles. The game comes with 45 tracks, and more are on the way, but they’re only going to be Beatles songs. And none of those Beatles songs work on Rock Band 2.

It’s a clear distinction that could explain Love’s emotional and slightly delayed reaction to Cobain’s use in Guitar Hero 5.

Had she seen The Beatles: Rock Band I’m sure she couldn’t help but ponder over what could have been: A video game that celebrates Kurt Cobain rather than using him. A title that expands Cobain’s audience, reminds people of his importance in the world of music and gives fans and neophytes an equal opportunity to try and understand the godfather of grunge.

In the future, game developers attracted to the allure of reality should perhaps keep in mind that what makes reality so intriguing is that it’s real, not that it’s a jumping off point for a distasteful fiction.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Dhani Harrison, son of The Beatles’ George Harrison and The Beatles: Rock Band consultant, was a guest on last night’s show, a rare Tonight Show video game promotional appearance, but one that may offer some insight into how well Harmonix’s new game will fare with the public. It seemed to fare alright with Conan and the boys, as shown in the clip below.

The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien Dhani Harrison (09/08/09) [NBC.com]

It appears that EA and MTV Games have been hamstrung by a very limited supply to retail. We’ve heard that many stores are already out of stock, unsurprising since we’ve also heard that individual stores were receiving quantities in the very low single digits. Some, apparently, were lucky to receive even one copy.

UPDATE: We’ve heard that a mere 4000 units of the full instrument bundle were brought into the country for launch. It seems the Wii version occupied the greatest share, so if you want it on 360 or PS3… good luck!

If you’ve been out trying to buy the Beatles today, let us know what your experience has been like in the comments below.

The Beatles: Rock Band features band authentic replica instruments, 45 songs pulled from the history of the band and the backing of the surviving members of The Beatles themselves. But is it just another Rock Band with The Beatles’ music, or is it, as Harmonix promised, something entirely new?

Loved
The Music: The Beatles: Rock Band is an aural journey through the sizzling, but short history of one of the world’s most successful and popular bands in history. The selection of music that walks participants through the 45-track trip was deftly plucked from the group’s discography, providing a deep look at the group’s evolution from skiffle to pop and offering subtle insight into how they absorbed and transformed the music of the day into their own sound. Along the journey the more popular, more pop music of The Beatles gives way to a sophisticated sound, touching on The Beatles’ experimental songwriting, their use of unusual recording methods and, of course, those dazzling lyrics.

Dreamscapes: Where the power of the game’s music selection sneaks up on gamers as they work their way from “Twist and Shout” to “The End,” the game’s 20 fantastical “dreamscapes” are a far less subtle, though no less powerful device. Each of these dream-like sequences start off in the Abbey Road recording studios, then launch gamers into surreal, psychedelic, fantasy worlds tied to specific songs. Each has the production value of a televised music video and each seems to draw out the meaning and power of the song it supplements.

Sounds: Easily missed, the background sounds included in the loading screens and at the beginning and end of many of the game’s songs, help pull gamers into the experience. Listening to the foursome talking among themselves about trivial matters, or hearing Ringo Starr complain about the blisters on his fingers after playing through “Helter Skelter” on drums, and perhaps earning some yourself, adds a final touch of authenticity to the experience.

Extras: As much as I enjoyed playing through The Beatles evolution, it is only 45 songs. It helps, then, that the game offers up such compelling rewards for replaying and perfecting venues and songs. These unlockables, all drawn from the Apple Corps’ archives include photographs and hard to find audio clips, such as the full version of The Beatles unreleased Christmas Record from 1963.

Instruments: Another level of realism includes the creation of four new controllers based on the instruments used by The Beatles. The Special Edition bundle of the game comes with a Ludwig drum set, a microphone and microphone stand and Paul McCartney’s Hofner bass. While the drum isn’t different looking, the Hofner bass is a surprisingly accurate replica. Other controllers available include a Rickenbacker 325 guitar and a Gretsch Duo Jet guitar.

Harmony: Not much has changed in the basic mechanic of Rock Band, but one of the biggest changes is the ability for three singers to use three microphones while playing The Beatles: Rock Band. The game actually tracks and scores each of the microphones separately. When multiple singers are playing there are also multiple pitch indicators that track the melody and two harmonies.

Hated
Deja Vu: The Beatles: Rock Band will be familiar to anyone who has played a Rock Band or Guitar Hero game. Very familiar. Perhaps too familiar in light of Harmonix co-founder’s promise to deliver an all new game built from the ground up. With the same mechanics, essentially the same controllers and the same way to experience the music, the only thing new about The Beatles: Rock Band is its subject matter. If this was built from the ground up, it was done without leaving the successful frame work of the original Rock Band.

Dopplegangers: The game features six settings carefully recreated from their real world counterparts and 20 mind-blowing dreamscapes, but what it doesn’t feature is a lot of variety in those fans watching you perform. For a game focusing on such a shot period of time and a single band, one would have hoped that more diversity would have been included in the screaming fans that compile a bulk of the shots at the venues you play. Instead gamers are treated to a few too many recycled audience animations in each location.

Beatle Beats: Beatles Beats is The Beatles: Rock Band version of the drum trainer already found in Rock Band 2. Instead of training with generic beats, it teaches gamers how to drum using some of Ringo Starr’s famous rhythms. But that’s all you get from The Beatles. No voice work from Starr, no new animations. A bit of a disappointment.

With The Beatles: It should probably go without saying that a game called The Beatles: Rock Band is meant for fans of The Beatles. It’s worth pointing out, though, that unlike band-themed released of Guitar Hero which include other group’s music in the mix, this one doesn’t. What you’re paying for is 45 songs by The Beatles and the promise of more Beatles music to purchase down the road.

The promise of Harmonix and Apple Corps working together to deliver a new way to experience The Beatles can’t help but raise expectations. It doesn’t help that early on Harmonix was adamant that what fans would receive would not be Rock Band featuring music from The Beatles. And that eventually, ultimately, is very close to what Harmonix delivered.

But while the game’s core remained mostly untouched, the developers managed to massage enough new, enough subtlety into the title to deliver something that leaves gamers somehow feeling much more in tune with not just the music of The Beatles, but their personalities. Ultimately, The Beatles: Rock Band is an interesting experiment, one that, while flawed, eventually delivers a new and rewarding experience for music and game fans alike.

The Beatles: Rock Band was developed by Harmonix and published by MTV Games for the Playstation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 on Sept. 9. In the US, the stand-alone game sells for $US59.99, the Limited Edition Premium Bundle sell for $US249.99, the Rickenbacker 325 Standalone Guitar and the Gretsch Duo Jet Standalone Guitar sells for $US99.99. In Australia, the stand-alone game sells for AU$99.95 RRP on 360 and PS3 and AU$89.95 RRP on Wii, while the Limited Edition Bundle sells for AU$369 RRP. Played through the entire story mode on drums. Played multiple quickplay sessions on drums, guitar and microphone. Sampled the Beatle Beats trainer and vocal harmony trainer.

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