Today we have learned of what will be coming with next week’s Rock Band Music Store update including tracks from both Alice in Chains and Breaking Benjamin. Below is the full list of tracks that will be available for Rock Band 2 on September 29th for the Wii and 360 and October 1st for the PS3:

·        Alice in Chains – “A Looking in View”
·        Alice in Chains – “Check My Brain”
·        Alice in Chains – “No Excuses”
·        Alice in Chains – “Rooster”
·        Alice in Chains – “Would?”
·        Breaking Benjamin – “I Will Not Bow”
·        Breaking Benjamin – “So Cold”
·        Breaking Benjamin – “The Diary of Jane”
·        Just Kait – “U Suck” *
·        Kula Shaker – “Hey Dude”
·        Kula Shaker – “Knight on the Town”

As for a price, well you’re looking at purchasing the whole thing as the Alice in Chains Pack 01 for $9.49/680 Microsoft points for the PS3 and 360 respectively or as single tracks for $1.99/160 Microsoft Points/200 Wii Points for the PS3/360/Wii respectively.

via destructoid

Warped Tour Pack
A Day to Remember – "The Downfall of Us All"
Bad Religion – "21st Century Digital Boy"
Chiodos – "I didn’t Say I Was Powerful, I said I was a Wizard"
Escape the Fate – "The Flood"
Underoath – "Reinventing Your Exit"

Maroon 5 Pack
Maroon 5 – "Little of Your Time"
Maroon 5 – "Makes Me Wonder"
Maroon 5 – "Wake Up Call"

All the songs are original master recordings and will cost the usual $1.99 (160 MS points) apiece. The packs can be had for $8.49 (680 points) and $5.49 (440 points) for Warped Tour and Maroon 5, respectively.

Expect these to hit Xbox Live on Tuesday and PlayStation Network two days later.

There are three songs from Franz Ferdinand, two from The Allman Brothers Band and a classic from Alien Ant Farm, among others.

• Franz Ferdinand – "Take Me Out"
• Franz Ferdinand – "Do You Want To"
• Franz Ferdinand – "Lucid Dreams"
• Alien Ant Farm – "Smooth Criminal"
• The Allman Brothers Band – "Blue Sky"
• The Allman Brothers Band – "Midnight Rider"
• The Distillers – "Drain the Blood"
• Luscious Jackson – "Naked Eye"
• Prong – "Idealistic Types"
• Prong – "The Banishment"

As expected, Xbox 360 owners can expect it on Tuesday, while PS3 owners will have to wait till Thursday. Individual songs cost 160 Microsoft points ($2); the Ferdinand songs will be available in a three-pack bundle offering a 50 cent savings in the grand scheme of things.

The 10-track album will come with all songs except “Mountain Song”, which is already on the Rock Band 2 disc.

The album can be had for 1280 points ($16) or individual songs for 160 points ($2).

• "Up the Beach"
• "Ocean Size"
• "Had a Dad"
• "Ted, Just Admit It…"
• "Standing in the Shower… Thinking"
• "Summertime Rolls"
• "Idiots Rule"
• "Jane Says"
• "Thank You Boys"
• "Pig’s in Zen"

If you’re looking to snag a few games but dont’ want to pay retail price, head over to Amazon’s Gold Box as they have apparently devoted an entire day of deals to just games.

So far Warriors Orochi 2, Rock Band 2, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and Buzz! Master Quiz have been thrown in the Gold Box and quickly snatched up. However, there are still 3 more time slots that Amazon has left to reveal with just clues to what they might be:

Any idea what they might be? If you just can’t stand the suspense, Shaun White’s Snowboarding for the Wii is up as the Deal of the Day with a discounted price of $29.98.

It was recently announced that the Microsoft manufactured wireless microphone that shipped with Lips will now get some love from both Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: Metallica.

This comes as news that Metallica will support the microphones out of the box and a patch due out this summer for Rock Band 2 that will add said support.

Seems like a perfect time to release a song list for Lips, huh? Microsoft did just that:

Available April 3:
Wish You Were Here – Incubus
Sugar, We’re Goin Down – Fall Out Boy
Bad Moon Rising – Creedence Clearwater Revival

Available April 10:
Ne-Yo Song Pack – Closer, So Sick, and Hate That I Love You by Rihanna feat. Ne-Yo
Coldplay Song Pack – Speed Of Sound, The Scientist, and In My Place
Looking Out My Back Door – Creedence Clearwater Revival
Closer – Ne-Yo
So Sick – Ne-Yo

Available April 17:
Creedence Clearwater Revival Song Pack – Looking Out My Back Door, Bad Moon Rising and Who’ll Stop the Rain
Kryptonite – 3 Doors Down
All My Life – K-Ci & Jo Jo
Sing – Travis

Available April 27:
Love Today – Mika
Ocean Avenue – Yellowcard
Linger – The Cranberries

Read (Kotaku)

Next week will see the release of the “Get the Funk Out” track pack which will offer the three following funk music: “Pick Up the Pieces” by Average White Band, “Shining Star” by Earth Wind & Fire and “Get Up” by James Brown.

They will also release the following tracks:

• Against Me! – "Thrash Unreal"
• The New Pornographers – "All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth"
• The New Pornographers – "Use It"
• Papa Roach – "Last Resort"
• Papa Roach – "Lifeline"

The above music will debut on March 17 on Xbox Live, followed by a PS3 release two days later. The track pack will cost 440 Microsoft points ($5.50), and each track can be bought for 160 points ($2).

Word has recently gotten out about 4 new Rock Band tracks set to hit Xbox Live and the PSN next week

This time we have offerings from The Offspring, R.E.M. and Richard Thompson:

The Offspring “All I Want”
The Offspring “The Kids Aren’t Alright”
R.E.M. “Losing My Religion”
Richard Thompson “The Way That It Shows”

These 4 tracks will be available as DLC for both Rock Band and Rock Band 2 on March 10th for $1.99 or 160 Microsoft Points each.

Read (Kotaku)

The song was one of the two tracks missing from the band’s compilation album “The Singles 1992-2003″ that was released for Rock Band. It will sell for 160 Microsoft points ($2).

As a reminder, the “Texas Flood” album will cost 1280 Microsoft points ($16); individual tracks can be bought for 160 Microsoft points ($2).

The DLC will be available on Xbox Live starting March 3; PS3 users will have to wait two more days.

“Black Sunshine” and “More Human than Human” are the two classic tracks from White Zombie – Rob Zombie’s band before he went solo – that will be made available. We will see “Wasted Again” from Turbonegro from their 2005 album.

As usual, the tracks will sell for 160 Microsoft points ($2) each and will hit Xbox 360 on Tuesday and PS3 on Thursday.

It’s seems like Rock Band will no longer be rock exclusive, not when Snoop’s around anyhow. Buzz circulating the interest has confirmed that along with recieiving a new variet show on MTV, an undetermined number of Snoop Dogg’s hits will be added to Rock Band’s extensive catalog via DLC. Sounds cool.

But how exactly will hip-hop translate into a, well, Rock Band? Who knows but I’m sure some aspiring MCs out there would like to take a shot at spittin’ some of Snoops rhymes.

Read (Kotaku)

Quit your yapping, Guitar Hero and Rock Band fanboys, as NPD has revealed the most popular band – in terms of units sold, anyway. The undisputed winner is Guitar Hero World Tour, which has sold 3.4 million units in North America alone; double that of Rock Band 2. In fact, World Tour sold nearly 1 million units in November alone.

Before Rock Band fans start flame wars on forums, it can be pointed out that the Guitar Hero is a better known brand than Rock Band, though the latter is generally received better by critics (and also has the largest DLC library). World Tour also went on sale on all platforms – PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and PS2 – on October 26, whereas Rock Band 2 hit the Xbox 360 on September 14, the PS3 October 19 and the PS2 and Wii on December 18. What this means is that NPD is reporting only about two weeks worth of sales on the latter two platforms which have the largest install bases in the region.

Whatever the case may be – both games are stupidly fun and awesome to play while having friends over. It’s just deciding which poison to take for the gamers.

Despite that the Wii and PS2 versions of the game lack online play, customization options and downloadable content they still managed to do quite well. According to data published by the NPD these hobbled versions of Rock Band sold more copies than either the full fledged versions or the sequel on the other consoles last year. Rock Band for Wii was the 29th best-selling game of the year with the PS2 version just behind at 31st. The two together sold over a million copies.

This doesn’t reflect any diminishing of the series’ popularity though as the original on Xbox 360 sold just under 800,000 units. Had the sequel, Rock Band 2, been released earlier in the year than September it probably would have had a serious chance of beating that million figure sales mark since it was only out for three months and sold 600,000 copies.

Support for downloadable content on the Wii version of Rock Band 2 was promised by Harmonix, who noted that there would be at least 30 downloadable songs on the game’s release. Currently there are none in the Wii Shop Channel.

According to a post by community manager Sean Baptiste, the promised content is “in the final testing stages,” adding that the studio is working “as fast as possible to deliver the 20 free bonus songs for Rock Band 2, plus an additional 30 songs from the Rock Band DLC Catalog to fans as early in 2009 as possible.”

Baptiste also promises that Wii gamers will eventually be able to purchase and download the “entire back catalogue” of the series’ DLC, which includes hundreds of songs.

Have you had enough with those cheap plastic drum pedals that come stock with your favorite band game, be it Rock Band 2 or Guitar Hero: World Tour? Well, Nyko has you covered recently announcing the launch of it’s $20 “Metal Pedal”.

While it won’t hit store shelves until January 2009, Nyko’s Metal Pedal will be compatible with Rock Band 1 and 2 along with Guitar Hero: World Tour. Let’s just hope this will solve the problems of those notoriously easy to break plastic pedals the game(s) come with.

Two three-packs will be released, with the first from The Killers offering “Mr. Brightside”, “Smile Like You Mean It” and “Spaceman”; the second pack is from Yngwie Malmsteen – “Caprici Di Diablo”, “Damnation Game” and “Red Devil”.

Finally, three new singles will also be uploaded – “Jesus Christ Pose” and “Pretty Noose” from Soundgarden and “Laid to Rest” from Lamb of God.

The three-packs will cost 440 points ($5.50) and individual tracks can be bought for 160 points ($2).

Unlike the usual update schedule, the songs will hit Xbox Live and PlayStation Network simultaneously on Tuesday.

If you’ve ever wanted to play video games with Jack Black or his Tenacious D sidekick Kyle Gass, now’s your chance.

It was recently announced that both of the above mentioned band members will be playing Rock Band 2 on Xbox Live November 20th to promote the release of the The Complete Masterworks 2 DVD.

The event starts at 8:30PM and to play with either of the guys, just add their gamer tags. JBTenacious and KGTenacious, I think it goes without say whose who.

You can read more here.

The duo, who started the studio way back in 1995, received $150 million last quarter for more than stellar sales of Rock Band 2; they are also due another payment “exceeding $150 million” next year.

"We may not have anticipated the payment would be that high, but it’s based on what they have achieved," said Viacom spokeswoman Kelly McAndrew.

Performance-based bonuses are nothing new, but damn, this is a lot of money!

The company has apparently hit an “unexpected delay with getting the content online from Microsoft” and “have suspended sending out the token codes until the content becomes available,” according to a forum post.

"We hope to have this resolved in the next 24 hours and apologize profusely for the delay," wrote community manager Sean Baptiste. "Again, we apologize for the delay and are working our butts off to get the content out to you."

PS3 owners will start to receive their codes later this week.

The Wii version has always been planned for release in December, though which part of December was a mystery till now.

This confirmation came to Destructoid in response to retailer murmurs that the game wouldn’t be released until January 2009.