Audio Video News

MTV-Harmonix, maker of the game platform Rock Band, will develop a new game based around the Beatles. It will become the first non-hard-copy digital distribution medium for music by the Beatles.

This is being widely hailed as the Fab Four's digital debut, apparently on the faulty assumption that CDs are not digital. But it is a major move for a back-catalogue monster that has been conspicuously absent from iTunes and other online music retailers. Even the $795 Beatles-branded iPod supplies the music on CDs, not on the player's hard drive.

Rumors that Beatles downloads would come to iTunes have been flying around for years, following the end of their legal tussle over the Apple logo. Paul McCartney has confirmed them, in a vague way, but all the talk has not so far borne the famous green fruit.

Though full details have yet to emerge, the game will be a standalone title, not a version of Rock Band with Beatles music. It will be "an experiential journey," likely with biographical elements, that will use music spanning the entire Beatles catalogue.

See ArsTechnica.