Rock Band 2 was released yesterday. Or maybe I should say that the Xbox 360 version of the game was launched on the North American market while the PlayStation 3 variant is expected in about a month, with the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Wii planned for late 2008. No release dates are available for other markets at the moment, but developers Harmonix are happy to talk about what they want to do in the future for their music simulation game.

A post by a developer on the official forum makes it clear that the company plans to offer 20 tracks as downloadable content free of charge. The exact date for the release of this new content or the names of the songs or of the bands that play them were not mentioned. Fortunately, further announcements are planned as the release dates for the new tracks are getting closer. Harmonix says that, between the weekly updates, the disk for the original Rock Band and the one for Rock Band 2 have more than 500 fully playable master tracks that will be available for players to enjoy by the end of the year.

Harmonix also says that the Jukebox mode, which was initially planned to make it into the game, is no longer in development. The post reveals that “This mode was removed from Rock Band 2 in the final stages of development. We have no immediate plans to bring this feature back to the platform in the future”. The Jukebox mode would have turned your gaming consoles into a music playing machine, with tracks from Rock Band 2 blasted through the system speakers while the game was not played. Some users speculate that this feature was cut because of the strain it would have placed on gaming consoles while others claim that Jukebox is no longer interesting for Harmonix because music companies sought to get more money for licensed songs that could have been played in this mode.