MTV won Beatles rights with 'flexibility,' songs won't be Rock Band-compatible
With such a dearth of information surrounding MTV's Beatles music game, we're trying to keep track of all the little details that have unfurled since last Thursday's revelation. According to sources close to Reuters, MTV Networks won the rights because it showed "more flexibility" than Guitar Hero World Tour publisher Activision Blizzard, whose CEO Bobby Kotick has repeatedly asserted that music publishers should be paying his company for inclusion in game.
That flexibility, we suspect, has to do with Rock Band branding, or the lack thereof. Although we've known that the Beatles game would share headlines with MTV/Harmonix's successful music series, Reuters notes rather matter-of-factly that "none of the Fab Four's songs will be available for download on the existing Rock Band franchise." (The recently-released AC-DC Track Pack allows you to transfer songs to your hard drive to play in Rock Band.) Given there's still quite a bit of time until the game's planned "holiday 2009" release, we'll hold out hope that Apple Corps changes its tune.
