The Beatles’ catalogue secured for video game

News

Andy Barrett Nov 3 2008, 8:45am

Rock Band game succeeds where others have failed

The Beatles are to be featured in a special edition of the Rock Band video game, following an announcement from the MTV/Harmonix games developer late last week. The game will be published and marketed by EA Games.

The news is a big feather in the cap of the games developer, following failed attempts by MTV/Harmonix’s competitor, Activision, the maker of Rock Band’s main rival, Guitar Hero and even Apple’s iTunes to get their hands on the digital rights.

Unlike Activision and Guitar Hero, the Fab Four will not be included as a hook into Rock Band, as with Guitar Hero’s Aerosmith and Metallica editions, but will be introduced as a standalone game, possibly not even titled Rock Band. Neither MTV/Harmonix nor EA have releasedmuch news regarding the deal to now, but it appears that the game will follow the career of The Beatles and ‘bring something different’ to the guitar game format.

It has been a difficult road, with The Beatles’ catalogue rights being held by a range of companies, individuals and deceased band members’estates and negotiations are reported to have taken close to two years to complete. In the end, and perhaps most importantly, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison have approved the game and the content before the launch – which is expected around Christmas next year.

It is understood that there will be no new versions of any of the songs used in the game, with the developers and rights holders clearly preferring to use the songs as they originally appeared with mixes by George Martin. Martin’s son, Giles, has been quoted as saying that the intention is for game players to “interact with what they know, rather than rehashing the music”.