New DLC - Be grateful

This week in Rock Band we are visited by the Grateful Dead, who bring us a nice 6-pack of songs. This is the second time we've gotten tracks from the band, but strangely enough, no full albums yet. We've gotten albums from a number of bands so far, so I wonder why they're sticking with random grab-bags for the Dead. I'm not really all that familiar with their music, but I can only assume that not all of the tracks would translate that well into a rhythm game, or wouldn't be fun to play. Well, whatever the reason, this week's selection can be yours for only 800 MSP ($10), but each track can be individually purchased for the usual price of 160 MSP ($2).
Here's what's on offer:

Hell In a Bucket
Don't Ease Me In
Cold Rain and Snow
Doin' That Rag
Fire On the Mountain
Uncle John's Band
Note: Click on any song for expert drum videos. Sorry, they're not all great quality this week - Not as many people uploading them, apparently.

So, as I said before, I don't really know the Grateful Dead that well, but the last 6-pack released by them had some classics that couldn't be missed. This time, though, I didn't really hear anything that grabbed me, so I decided to skip them all, but since next week's selection has already been announced, I'm pretty sure I'll be bringing you more reviews fairly soon.

In other news, NPD Group released the 2008 sales figures for Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour this week. As far as the full band kits go, World Tour sold 3.4 million compared to RB2's 1.7 million. This really comes as no surprise though. After all, World Tour released simultaneously on 360, PS3, PS2, and Wii, where as RB2 had a staggered release over a couple of months. Then you have to consider that they only counted full band kits, but many Rock Band players may have bought just the stand-alone disc and used the instruments from the first game. But the biggest reason is simply because Guitar Hero has the name brand that uninformed consumers turn to. Most people have no idea who actually developed them, or that Activision bought the Guitar Hero license; they just turn to the one that sounds the most familiar. Then again, I guess you wouldn't expect a shameless knockoff to sell as well as the original, right?

There was also an interesting story circulating this week that originated on Billboard. In an article about Rock Band, the site stated "MTV said it plans to increase the number of available songs this year to as many as 5,000". This was then picked up by various news outlets, although most people could see how unrealistic the idea was. After all, the current library is about 500 tracks, so to get another 4,500 in 50 weeks would require about 90 songs a week - far too much to expect from the developers, and way too many for consumers to buy.

Harmonix responded by releasing a statement that pointed people toward the original Ars Technica quote that started the confusion. In an interview with Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos, Ars Technica asked whether the company felt constrained by the 'Rock' part of Rock Band. In his response, Rigopulos said:

"That said, one of the great promises of the catalog moving forward, as the catalog expands from 500 songs to 5,000 songs or whatever in the coming years, is that we're going to be less constrained from a genre standpoint, and I think you will see us starting to branch out into... whether it's country or R&B and jazz or funk, or things of that sort. With the critical mass of the "rock" core covered, of course we'll keep expanding it, but the critical mass is covered, so now we can start to branch off in ways that haven't made sense in the past but will make sense moving forward. "

So that's where the 5,000 figure came from. It's clear that this was just a misunderstanding that got out of hand, but one thing that can be taken away from this should be the fact that Harmonix are intending to keep supporting the game with regular DLC releases. We should also be getting a more diverse selection in future which can only help broaden the appeal of the game. So we may not be getting 5,000 tracks this year, but it sure sounds like they want to work towards it someday.