Rock Band 2 Gets More Tracks on the Wii

Harmonix and Electronic Arts are announcing that they have another batch of six tracks that Rock Band 2 players can get for the Wii version of the game. It's nice to see that the companies are moving quickly to add songs for the game after the official inauguration of the Rock Band Wii Store.

The tracks you can now download are: “Siva” from Smashing Pumpkins; “Just What I Needed” by The Cars; “Tell Me Baby” created by Red Hot Chili Peppers; “Gimme Three Steps” from Lynyrd Skynyrd; “Live Forever” by Oasis and “Attack” by 30 Seconds to Mars. Each of the tracks costs 200 Wii Points or 2 dollars in real money, which you can actually use to buy groceries with. In case you like the songs, but don't own a Wii console, you need to know that all the above mentioned tracks are also available on the PlayStation Store and the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Recent data released by the NPD Group, which tracks sales of videogame hardware and software, shows that Guitar Hero: World Tour from Neversoft and Activision Blizzard sold twice the number of copies moved by Rock Band 2 created by Harmonix and MTV Games. One of the reasons cited by analysts is the fact that the latest Guitar Hero game launched at the same time for all platforms, including the Nintendo Wii, while the latest Rock Band had a staggered release, with the Nintendo Wii version coming some time after the Xbox 360 one. Getting the Wii track store up is crucial to Harmonix, as the company manages to sell more tracks than its direct rival and also because the Nintendo made home gaming console has a huge install base.

Guitar Hero is also releasing tracks for the Wii this week. A full listing and prices can be found in this news-story written by my colleague Andrei Dobra.