1. So here we are. From six down to one, we have our winner. This is what you Console Monster readers voted as your favourite music videogame of all time. Missed the other parts? Find out our six to four, three and two charters.
13 million copies sold. 60 million songs downloaded. Over $1 billion in sales. Those figures are quite staggering and quite rightly so mean that Rock Band is your favourite music videogame of all time.
Why the success? It was the first game to allow up to four of you to play along together as a band. Created by Harmonix who had being signed by MTV Games to develop the game after the previous Guitar Hero titles, this was a major coup for the publishing giant EA.And it paid off, because Rock Band quite rapidly became the definitive music title.
Lead guitar, bass guitar, drums and a microphone were all included in the game and despite the high price tag to purchase the instruments, families flocked to purchase it during the lead up to Christmas 2007.
Supported by a weekly release of download content, Rock Band was the game that got people downloading music on a regular basis with over 1000 songs now featured for download. Fourteen full albums have launched on the service with some bands releasing their singles on the Rock Band service alongside physical releases of music or digital downloads to attract interest.
Followed by the sequel in 2008, Rock Band 2 launched expanding the song list extensively to 84 tracks. For the first time these were all master tracks and owners of the original game could import their songs for a small fee excluding a few artists which had being snapped up by rivals Neversoft.
In 2009, the company launched The Beatles: Rock Band which was a separate game from the rest of the series and scored very highly with the press who loved the attention to detail of the band and the vast amount of archive material and facts included in the title. However unlike other installments of the game, songs cannot be exported to other games making it more of a stand-alone title.
Lego Rock Band launched for smaller gamers, a direct rival to Band Hero also in late 2009 though wasn’t quite as popular as the main games.
Though Rock Band hasn’t sold as many copies at retail as Guitar Hero, its influence has being much greater. Bands are becoming more popular thanks to the game and the soon to launch Rock Band Network will allow unsigned artists to have their music featured on the game through download content.
Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy who founded Harmonix were named in Time Magazine to be some of the 100 most influential people of 2008 thanks to the creation of Rock Band. With an accolade like that it is no wonder that you voted Rock Band as your favourite music video game of all time.
Thank you to every who took the time to vote in our poll. We’ll have more from our series of special articles soon including an interview with Bang Camaro who have featured in Rock Band. Have any comments on our poll, post them below!
