Worldwide sales of Harmonix and MTV Games’ The Beatles: Rock Band has passed the 1.7 million mark, according to a report over at the LA Times, after what seems like an incredibly slow start for what was billed as a blockbuster in the music game genre.

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Available to buy and download now are three new pop rock songs for the Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero: World Tour, featuring a song apiece from OneRepublic, Pink and Angels and Airwaves, either individually for 160 MS Points, or as a pack for 440 MS Points.

Also available is a free Ferret/Metal Blade track pack featuring tracks from Chimaira, Devil Wears Prada and Unearth.

Check out the full listing of new Guitar Hero: World Tour content below:

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Activision Blizzard is reporting $981 million in revenue for the last quarter of their fiscal year ending on March 31st, with $189 million in profits, which they say is all thanks to the continued impressive performance of games in their Guitar Hero and Call of Duty franchises.

Guitar Hero and Call of Duty, the company claims, remain two of the top five best selling franchises in the US and Europe, as Guitar Hero: World Tour became the best selling third-party title in the US across all platforms (in dollars), and is the best selling third-party title on the Wii – the only third-party title to crack the top five best selling games on the platform.

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A track pack containing three Nirvana songs has recently hit Xbox LIVE Marketplace, if The Major is to be believed.

For 160 MS Points apiece, or 440 MS Points for all three, you can get the following Nirvana tracks for Guitar Hero: World Tour on Xbox 360:

• Stay Away
• Sappy
• Very Ape

Nirvana fans, rejoice!

Guitar Hero: World Tour for the mobile? Say it ain’t so…

Well, it must be so if there’s a debut trailer for the title, with real in-game footage and everything. It might be good for music fans who want a quick game on the go, but wouldn’t you rather go for Guitar Hero on the DS, or Rock Band on the PSP (system availability permitting)?

Watch the debut trailer for Guitar Hero: World Tour for mobile handsets below:

The Major has let everybody know that you’re now able to get three new songs for Guitar Hero: World Tour from Xbox LIVE Marketplace, featuring the musical styling of classic metal band, Motörhead.

There’s only three of them, going for 160 MS Points a pop, but fans of the band will probably appreciate them:

• Love Me Like a Reptile
• Iron Fist
• Jail Bait

Ace! (of Spades.)

The set list for Guitar Hero World Tour just got a whole lot bigger with the recent announcement that 15 new songs will be landing in April.

The Pixies will make their Guitar Hero debut while Silversun Pickups will release two new songs off their new album prior to its release. Gamers can also look forward to three more hits from Nirvana and more music from Motörhead and Steely Dan.

Three songs from The Pixies will arrive on the 2nd of April, two singles from their second album Doolittle, ‘Debaser’ and ‘Monkey Gone to Heaven,’ and ‘The Sad Punk’ from their final album Trompe le Monde.

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A brief glance through our past reviews will reveal that we have an enormous amount of love for rhythm games, or any games that feature music prominently. The simple fact is that we adore music, we love videogames, and so when the two intertwine they usually produce something we find extremely enjoyable. Guitar Hero was for a long time the pinnacle of this, in our humble opinion, but was overtaken by the fantastic, magnificent, no-superlatives-are-enough Rock Band. With World Tour, the original guitar franchise seeks to take its crown back, and while there may be differing opinions on which is the better between the two, there is no doubt that between them we have the greatest rhythm games ever created.

Continue reading El33tonline’s review of Guitar Hero: World Tour.

NPD, the product sales tracker in the US, has revealed that Guitar Hero: World Tour outsold its rival music game, Rock Band 2, by a factor of 2 to 1 in 2008.

World Tour, releasing simultaneously across four platforms in 2008 (Wii, PS2, PS3 and Xbox 360) racked up 3.4 million units in sales, while Rock Band 2, on a staggered release schedule from the middle of September to the middle of December, has sold 1.7 million units.

While these numbers are significant and comprehensive, one must take into account the staggered release of Rock Band 2, as the last two platforms on which it was release were the PS2 and Wii – the two consoles with the largest combined installed base.

A new Guitar Hero World Tour track pack has been released on Xbox LIVE Marketplace, this time comprising three Australian acts and their songs, entitled the Aussie Track Pack.

Let’s see… we’ve got ‘Outtathaway!’ by The Vines, ‘Tomorrow’ by Silverchair and ‘Dimension’ by Wolfmother, which cost the usual 160 MS Points each, or you can get all three for 440 MS Points.

If you’re a fan of the bands, you can do worse than get the Aussie Track Pack, available in all regions now on Xbox LIVE Marketplace.

Bruce Springsteen will make his videogame debut in Guitar Hero with two downloadable songs becoming available for Guitar Hero: World Tour.

The two song track pack will be available for download simultaneously with the release of his new album, ‘Working on a Dream,’ on the 27th of January. The popular song ‘Born to Run’ and the new song ‘My Lucky Day’ will be free to download between the 27th of January and the 4th of February.

The track pack will be available on Xbox Live Marketplace, the PlayStation Store and as singles for the Wii. After the free period the track pack will cost 320 Microsoft Points for the Xbox 360 and 200 Wii Points for the Wii with the PS3 pricing to be confirmed.

The Boss still rocks on!

The downloadable content (DLC) wars have never been hotter as both Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band continue to receive new songs and content to flesh out their respective line-ups, but this time it’s Guitar Hero’s turn.

Tomorrow you can look forward to a track pack from The Smashing Pumpkins, featuring oldies The Everlasting Gaze and 1979, as well as newer song G.L.O.W. From Nirvana you can expect You Know You’re Right, Negative Creep and Sliver, all wrapped up in a track pack and available on December 11th.

On November 18th The Eagles will make a DLC appearance with Frail Grasp on the Big Picture, One of These Nights and Life in the Fast Lane. Each of the above track packs will be available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace (440 MS Points), the PlayStation Store ($5.49) or on Wii (200 Wii Points per song), or you can choose to buy all of the songs individually.

Additionally, three free songs will be released on December 23rd (just in time for Christmas) in the form of Jimi by Slightly Stoopid, Your Face by Pepper and Sacrifice by Expendables, all in one convenient package entitled The Reggae Rock Track Pack.

What a peculiar and-simultaneously-amazing video. It features some guy on a bike with a Guitar Hero themed handlebar, riding over little coloured dots on the road to simulate the in-game Guitar Hero fret board, getting ‘star power’ and multipliers along the way, eventually finishing the song with a ‘You Rock!’ Which song? Prisoner of Society by The Living End, on Hard difficulty, of course.

Was this the work of Activision PR, or a group of people with a little too much time on their hands? Surely the former… surely. Watch below and be amazed.

Thanks to Variety for the heads up.

A research project has been initiated by two doctors and Blondie drummer, Clem Burke, to look into the real-world benefits of using the Guitar Hero: World Tour drum kit.

The project, entitled the Clem Burke Drumming Project, is “based on the pursuit of knowledge through the application of scientific principles to the various art forms of drumming. It is committed to the dissemination of information leading to increased enjoyment, health and well-being of all participants involved in drumming.”

This research project, with ten years of work behind it already, is now looking at a different aspect of drumming - plastic drum controllers, specifically those used in Guitar Hero: World Tour. The researchers will look into how well drumming skills, learned in World Tour, transfer to drumming on a real drum kit, as well as the physiological demands of the game compared to live drumming, with research being conducted at the recently established University of Gloucestershire’s drumming laboratory and at the University of Chichester.

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You’ll soon be able to get your fix of The Killers on Guitar Hero: World Tour. On November 25th, two songs from The Killers’ third album, Day & Age, will be available for your downloading pleasure.

‘Human’ and ‘Losing Touch’ are the two songs, while another song, ‘Mr. Brightside,’ from their debut album Hot Fuss, will also feature, creating the holy trinity that seems necessary to form a track pack.

The pack will be available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace for 440 MS Points (160 per song), the PlayStation Store for $5.49 ($1.99 per song) or via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection on Wii for 200 Wii Points per song. Killer! (Sigh…)