14 DAY TRIAL // Harmonix, the original developer of Guitar Hero and the creator of band simulator Rock Band, is bombarding players with announcements about new songs that are available as DLC for their game.
It seems that people learn to play new songs so fast that the entire musical catalog of the 90s is set to be downloadable in a just a few years. And matters will only get worse, as Guitar Hero also goes band simulator and the inevitable clone games will start popping up.
Until then, Rock Band still stands alone as far as DLC announcements come. What seem to be the fabled bonus tracks of the European release of the game are now up for download over on the Xbox Live Marketplace initiative from Microsoft, while the PlayStation Store will get them tomorrow, most likely.
The songs are mostly master tracks, with the only cover being Beetlebum from Blur. Other tracks that you can get via download are Hier Kommt Alex by German favorites Die Toten Hosen, Countdown to Insanity from H-BlockX, Perfekte Welle by Juli, Manu Chao from Les Wampas, Hysteria performed by Muse, Oasis' Rock N Roll Star, New Wave by Pleymo and Monsoon from Tokio Hotel. The price for all these tracks will likely be the usual 1.99 dollar-tag that Harmonix has been using for quite a while now.
There's also talk that a whole new complete album is set to be made available on the Xbox Live Marketplace on May 27 and on the PlayStation Store on May 29. The album is the now classic new wave effort from The Cars titled, well? The Cars. If you buy the tracks one by one, you get to pay $1.99 a track while if you get the whole album you can get it for 14.99 dollars.
The DLC business is quickly growing in importance, with a significant number of tracks downloaded since November 2007 when Rock Band was launched, and a lot more tracks that Harmonix hopes to get online this year.