Harmonix, better known as the developers of Rock Band, have announced an exclusive deal with The Apple Corps., better known as The Beatles and their various estates, to produce a Beatles-centric music video game. The new Rock Band spinoff-

Wait, it’s not a Rock Band game? Oh. Huh. I guess I just kind of assumed it was.

I mean, rival Neversoft did Guitar Hero: Aerosmith for some reason. I sort of figured this was Harmonix going “Oh, a whole game about a decent band with only a single number 1 hit? Yeah, that’s okay, I guess. We’ve been working on this little thing you might be interested in. It’s called ‘ROCK BAND: THE MOTHERFUCKING BEATLES.’ OH! OH! HOW DO YOU LIKE US NOW?”

That’s probably reading too much into it.

Probably the game will share a lot with Rock Band. I’ve no doubt you’ll be able to play it with the same plastic guitars and plastic drums. My conjecture is they’re going to keep it open by making it playable with regular controllers as well, though that guess is as good as anyone else’s at this point. If you’ve got the most popular band in the world signed to an exclusive game in the fastest-growing entertainment media in world, maybe you don’t restrict your audience to people with like $150 worth of extra equipment.

If that’s the route they took, what would be appealing to the masses of more casual gamers? Well, if I might venture further out on a limb, maybe Harmonix would take a page from The Idom@ster by Namco.

No, not with the teenage anime girls. Let me explain.

Harmonix probably will have access to all the master Beatles tracks for this project. The game might let someone take the role of producer, staging the band’s landmark concerts, arranging the camera angles and maybe even mixing the music. Throw in some fairly simple button-pressing games, and hey, there you go.

Well, that’s one idea. I guess we’ll see.

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