One of the biggest achievements for a band is to have an album go "platinum", meaning that it has sold over 1 million copies since it’s release. The team at Harmonix is celebrating this achievement after sales numbers reveal that its Rock Band title has reached multiplatinum status.
In this case multiplatinum refers to the game’s downloadable content (DLC). The developer revealed that the game has sold more than 2 million downloadable tracks via Xbox Live and the PlayStation Store. Although this may seem like alot for a game that has been out only for a little less than two months, Harmonix hopes to keep these numbers up the rest of the year.
Paul DeGooyer, Senior Vice President of MTV Games, called the huge DLC boom "tremendously meaningful." These figures are especially important since Harmonix undertook a huge challenge by promising it’s fans that there would be a significant amount of downloadable content coming by way of downloadable add-on tracks released weekly. "We’re well ahead of where we thought we’d be," DeGooyer said regarding the game’s quick success.
As for the future of Rock Band’s downloadable content? Simple math reveals that there should be over one hundred tracks scheduled for the rest of 2008, with fans able to look toward new artists that were not featured in the game.
"The thinking at the initial launch was to supply a deeper dive into three key artists already on the disc — Queens of the Stone Age, The Police, and Metallica," DeGooyer explained.
"But then also supply songs that provide tremendous gameplay experience that we couldn’t quite get on the disc. That’s kind of what we’re clearing out now. I think you’ll see, if not concentrations of genres, perhaps expansion into other sub-genres of rock. And perhaps a bit more of an apparent organizing principle to what is being released."
Although everything seems great in the world of Rock Band, Harmonix has yet to release the full album downloads it had promised before the game was released but DeGooyer claims it is purely a technical standstill as the rights were secured long before the announcement was made.
"It’s purely a technical thing," DeGooyer explained, "When we announced [full albums], we made darn sure our deal was done and dusted and announced it with the enthusiastic support of our partners. It is a technical delivery issue. Imagine, you can get three songs from an artist and the likelihood that in creating the stems something goes wrong, is a quarter of what it is if you are trying to get twelve songs at once.”
“You can’t launch it until you have everything in hand. That’s what we’re dealing with. With older recordings, it’s difficult in some cases to find the right takes, the right stems, make sure things are right on. That said, I hope to be talking to you shortly about some additional albums that will be coming [with release] dates on them."
Finally, DeGooyer was pinned on the topic of immortalizing rock legends by featuring hits from legends such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin in the game. He explained, "Wish I could go into detail, suffice it to say, we’re talking to everybody."
Being able to offer users a wide variety of downloadable content, at a fairly reasonable price and more frequently then its competition has been Harmonix’s mold for success. Continue to watch for the weekly track updates to find your favorite artists offering their tracks to this hit game.