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NEWS

Rock Band Tops $1b in North America

Kris Graft's picture

By Kris Graft

March 26, 2009

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Harmonix's Rock Band music game franchise has surpassed $1 billion in North America in 15 months, MTV Games announced, citing figures from NPD Group.

On top of that, players have purchased over 40 million paid individual song downloads. Over 600 songs are available, selling for $6.25 for three-song bundles or $1.99 per individual song.

Rock Band 2 launched in North America last year for $189.99 on PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.

Viacom, which owns Harmonix parent MTV Games, said the Rock Band franchise had shipped 10 million units since the series' November 2007 debut.

According to NPD, Rock Band was the number one title of 2008 by revenues.

Competitor Activision announced in January that 2007's Guitar Hero III--on its own--had surpassed $1 billion, although that figure is in total worldwide sales.

Lu-Tze's picture
On March 27th Lu-Tze said:

Over 600 songs are available, selling for $6.25 for three-song bundles or $1.99 per individual song.

No wonder they're making a profit, with price schemes like that :)
Misprint?

Alex Walker's picture
On March 27th Alex Walker said:

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. Are you suggesting they are ripping people off, because I thought the pricing structure was pretty good. Certainly head and shoulders above Guitar Hero II and III.

Lu-Tze's picture
On March 27th Lu-Tze said:

I'm just pointing out buying individual songs is apparently cheaper than buying 3-packs. A bit odd. Or am I missing something?

NickgamertagO1's picture
On March 30th NickgamertagO1 said:

That's gotta be a typo then. It shouldn't be more expensive as a bundle. It gets confusing when you're dealing with MS' space bucks, maybe the story got it wrong (I'm assuming you read the $6.25 a bundle thing off this story).

NickgamertagO1's picture
On March 26th NickgamertagO1 said:

Guitar Hero: Greatest hits is slated for a June '09 release so they're not too far off. I just picked up GH: Metallica on Tuesday (the store was selling it early for some reason) and I love it. But I'm a huge Metallica fan and most of the songs are from ride the lightning through And justice for all. They knew what music of their's the fans liked most. There is a couple from the Black album, 1 or 2 from load/reload, 1 from S&M, and 1 from Death Magnetic. Dyers Eve, Shortest Straw, One, Sanitarium, Master of Puppets, Disposable Heroes, Fade to Black, For Whom the Bell Tolls, etc. pure classics. Funny enough, nothing from St. Anger made it...

Alex Walker's picture
On March 26th Alex Walker said:

Yes there is, Frantic is on there.

Ozzman_79's picture
On March 26th Ozzman_79 said:

I would like to play that game, if I hadn't vowed years ago to never give Metallica 1 red cent of my money again. Hoping someone I know buys it so I can borrow it. Now that you mention how much of the content is based on the first 10 years of their career, not the horrid last 15, i'm even more keen to give it a whirl!

NickgamertagO1's picture
On March 26th NickgamertagO1 said:

Nice catch skyWalker, didn't even realize Frantic was on St. Anger (hated the album, I couldn't even name a song from that album) I thought frantic was maybe a Garage Inc. song or from Kill em All (didn't like either of those very much).

Yeah Ozzman, it seems like the majority of the Metallica songs on the game are from those 4 albums. All their classics are in there. I wish To Live is to Die was in there though...

Mystakill's picture
On March 26th Mystakill said:

I'm still waiting for Guitar Hero: One-Hit-Wonders. It's just a matter of time before Activision dredges up something like that. Activision apparently didn't learn anything from EA's previous debacles, although EA's recent pricing of Burnout Paradise content *is* a return to the despised EA of old...