14 DAY TRIAL // The Beatles Rock Band has been out since September 9 and Harmonix, MTV Games and Viacom must by now have a certain knowledge of how the music-simulation title is performing, especially against its biggest rival, Guitar Hero 5 from Activision. The first glimpses of the situation were offered by the Chief Executive Officer of Viacom, Philippe Dauman.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, he mentioned that the video game was selling better than internal projections at Viacom had been indicating. Dauman stated that, “In the first week, we've sold about 25 percent of our inventory, and we've had tremendous excitement around this game. It's selling well across all platforms, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii. And, in fact, the pricing change that was made on PlayStation has helped sales on that platform.”
Apparently, even the higher priced 249.99-dollar version of The Beatles Rock Band, which includes all new, band-branded instruments and microphones, is performing well, despite the tough economic times, and Viacom is expecting to run out of the bundle by November.
Dauman was also saying that Viacom, which had been disappointed with sales of the various Rock-Band titles in the last months, would continue to push The Beatles in the coming months, with Christmas approaching, so that sales could even increase in the future. Dauman did not talk about how the game was doing when compared with Guitar Hero 5, which Activision has been touting as outselling Rock Band by a ration of 4 to 1.
These numbers seem in part confirmed by the latest United Kingdom chart, but we'll have to wait for the September NPD Group sales numbers in order to have a broader view. Still, Viacom is seeing Rock Band as a wholly important title, with more than 60 million DLC songs sold for all the titles through the Rock Band Store.