UPDATED: the Who’s next? Rock Band, that’s who.

July 1st, 2008 · 1 Comment

by Lono

[UPDATE]: Looks like the 12 tracks have been confirmed on the official the Who website. I cut and pasted this straight from the site (thanks Shane86!):

Release date: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 (Xbox LIVE® Marketplace and PLAYSTATION®Store)

TRACKS: The Best of The Who Rock Band Edition”
“Amazing Journey”
“Baba O’Riley”
“Behind Blue Eyes”
“Eminence Front”
“Going Mobile”
“Leaving Here”
“My Generation” (LIVE)
“Real Good Looking Boy”
“Sea & Sand”
“Summertime Blues” (LIVE)
“Who Are You”
“Young Man Blues” (LIVE)
(All tracks utilize the original master recordings)

Price: $1.99 (160 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360) per track or $19.99 (1600 Microsoft Points for Xbox 360) for the entire collection of tracks.

Locations: Xbox LIVE Marketplace and PLAYSTATION®Network

When the Rock Band hype machine was in full swing, one of Harmonix and MTV’s bullet points was selling full albums of downloadable content. One of the promises of Harmonix was the Who’s “the Who’s next” full album release on day one of Rock Band’s release. It didn’t happen. Almost 9 months later, the Who have something else up their sleeve for Rock Band.

Find out what the Who have in store, after the jump.

Waaaaay back in August of 2007, around Episode 3 of the Sarcastic Gamer Podcast, I stated my opinion on why I thought Rock Band would be the better offering between Guitar Hero III and Rock Band, based purely on the music. One of the biggest reasons was much hyped full album download of the Who’s “the Who’s next” It’s got to be one of the greatest rock and roll albums of all time, in my opinion, and to have the ability to play that whole opus on Rock Band would be karaoke ecstasy. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.

When the album was to be transferred into Rock Band tracks, some of the master tracks could not be found, including the master tracks for Baba O’Reilly, easily one of the best and most well known Who songs ever. The lost master tracks delayed the release indefinitely. Without the master recordings, a proper release of the entire album of “the Who’s next” was impossible. It looked as though that promise of “the Who’s next” would go unfulfilled.

A solution has been found. According to this Rock Band 2 story by Yahoo, the Who is planning on a “best of” DLC release of 12 songs including “My Generation” and “Who Are You” for $19.99 or $1.99 individually. That’s a hell of a deal.

Here’s the best part, the tracks are coming out on July 15.

I can only hope that Baba O’ Reilly makes it in some form. It may not be “the Who’s next” but, in my opinion, it is the next best thing. Consider it promise delivered. Finally.

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