Big business: Beatles style
By Benny Har-Even in Editorial
Posted in Beatles on
It’s not really something we can cover over here at IT PRO, but along with Computex, the biggest show in the world this week was E3 – the gaming expo in Los Angeles, where the all gaming companies go to show off their wares to an eager public. And eager they are – gaming, even in these recession hit times is still serious business – in fact, back in January it was announced that for the first time gaming had globally taken more money than movies!
And what excited me most was the announcement of the Beatles: Rock Band! If you haven’t seen it, go check out the games’ opening cinematic – it’s awesome. It’s done by the guy behind the Gorillaz vids and it’s a fabulous three minute surreal tour through Beatles music.
It was also pretty great to see the Paul and Ringo on stage together – brought a smile to the face in a week of pretty depressing news.
Up to now I’ve admired the Rock Band gaming genre, but never really been tempted to take part myself. In my previous job, a flat TV and an Xbox were permanent fixtures and I used to struggle to work as a colleague, who was actually in a real band and a guitarist, used to mesmerise us with his fat fingered Rock Band skills (skillz?). I’ve played once and was rubbish, and it looked like it would take a lot of effort to get that good. And as Homer Simpson once said, “if something’s hard to do, then it’s not worth doing”.
But as I’m something massive Beatles fan, I’ve now got the bug to once again pick up a guitar. I do have a real one sitting in the loft somewhere, and I sort of remember a few chords, but of course none of that really matters and Rock Band is just lots of button.
The release date of a quite deliberate 09/09/09 – which could cost me an awful lot of money considering that that remastered versions of the Beatles catalogue is being released on CD that day too.
As for digital downloads – the press release that announced the release of the remastered CD’s had a terse, “Discussions regarding the digital distribution of the catalogue will continue. There is no further information available at this time. Now stop asking me about it.” (OK, I added in the last sentence).
Of course, I don’t really care about digital downloads as I’d want the best quality version, and am actually disappointed the releases aren’t on DVD-Audio or SACD – two high resolution disc audio formats of which you’ve probably never heard of anyway.
But anyway. It’s Friday, and nearly 5pm so go check out the Beatles Rock Band Cinematic. It’s awesome.
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