Xbox gets Rock Band 90-day exclusive

I've just come back from a chat with some of the folks at Xbox who are in an excited state as they have just managed to negotiate a 90-day timed exclusive with Rock Band, the big competitor to Guitar Hero III. This will mean the other consoles will have to wait until the summer before launching their own versions of the new game, with the Xbox 360 version coming out on the 23rd of May. Many of the original team that launched Guitar Hero jumped ship to start up Rock Band, so for the companies involved, it really is personal.

For those of you who have been living in a vacuum, Guitar Hero III is a game that comes with a guitar controller and lets you play along with famous songs, getting points for the accuracy and timing of your playing. Rock Band takes it up a notch, adding in a bass, mic and drums so you can play with four friends, each playing a different part of the song.

I've got Guitar Hero III and have played it with a couple of friends who earn their living as musicians and interestingly, the one who is a guitarist says he finds playing the harder levels of Guitar Hero more difficult than playing the same songs with real instruments. It will be interesting to see how Rock Band's multi-instrument set-up will put my drummer friend to the test, but it also raises an interesting question: if you have four friends to play with, why not start a real band? Personally I rock at Guitar Hero III, but if you heard me playing a real guitar, it sounds as if I was fighting it and the strings were winning.

Comments

[The Last Egg]

I'm looking forward to Rock Band not because I can play with 3 of my mates but because, like the song from Hard Rock, I just want to be a drummer. I also can't really be a drummer because of my paper thin walls and grumpy sods for neighbours.

[Phil K]

Why is Rock Band taking so long to come out in the UK? It was released months ago in the US. I hate that companies release stuff so much later over here.

[K Robinson]

Phil K. Not everything gets a US release way ahead of us. Mario Kart is being launched in the UK before the US.

[Charlie]

Can.not.wait! Do you know how cool this is going to be? I saw it on One Tree Hill and it means that I can play on my Xbox 360, soooo glad I didn't get a PS3! Haha. Shame it is gonna be so expensive, but looks WELL worth it.

[John]

It's all well and good, but typical Rip-Off-Britain! The full kit costs approx £75 in the US, but £180 in the UK.

Typical.

You can now buy the XBox 360 itself for less than that!

[drumbum_atl]

I'm in the US and I've made my living playing drums since 2001. I played Rock Band at a friend's house last month and it kicks butt. Lots of fun. Interestingly, though, I got a higher score on the "hard" setting than on the "easy" setting. This is a good way to trick your pro-musician friends: because they will play the song "correctly" on easy, the game will credit them fewer points as they blow through the "simplified" charts of the easy setting.

[Suprmonkey21]

Phil K. It takes a lot of time to translate the games into all those different languages in europe. Then we have the NA region with a lot less languages.