Is the Beatles Rock Band game too late?”
The long-buzzed-about Beatles video game, from the creators of the Rock Band franchise, made news this past week with some pricing details and an official release date. The Beatles: Rock Band, coming September 9, 2009, will be available as a $59 stand-alone game, a $99 bundle with a guitar, and a $249 bundle which also includes a drum kit. While this is about as big a coup as a video game publisher could hope for, and we’ll be the first in line to jam along with “Hey Bulldog” (which will hopefully be included), there’s still reason to be concerned that as long-time holdouts to any form of digital distribution, the Beatles are showing up too late to make a real splash. The most important factor is that consumers may have already reached a saturation point in terms of music rhythm games. We’re on the fourth generation of guitar-bundled music games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and the second generation of the full drum/guitar/microphone versions. Even though both franchises continue
