Rock Band DLC announcement time! HMX confirmed the appropriately timed President of the Untied States of America pack release next week, and added a track from Hinder and Fall Out Boy for good measure. Combine those five tracks with the 20 free RB2 DLC already scheduled for release on November 4th and you’ve got one hell of an election day offering.

• Presidents of the United States of America - Dune Buggy
• Presidents of the United States of America - Feather Pluck’n
• Presidents of the United States of America - Ladybug

PUSA tracks are $1.99 (160 Microsoft Points) or $5.49 (440 Microsoft Points) for the pack.

• Hinder - Use Me
• Fallout Boy - I Don’t Care

Hinder and Fallout Boy are $.99 (80 Microsoft Points) each for a limited time (1 month).

More here, courtesy of Renrock.

It’s official, HMX and the Beatles are getting their rock on together come holiday season 2009. At a live press conference this morning all the major players spilled the beans on the new project, here’s the skinny…

• It’s a brand new game that takes advantage of some aspects of the Rock Band platform, but it is not a Rock Band game.
• When asked “Does this mean Rock Band won’t get Beatles music at all?” they wouldn’t comment.
• It will be released worldwide holiday season 2009.
• Giles Martin, son of George Martin and producer of the Beatles mashup/remix album Love, is the music producer for the game.
• The game will span the Beatles entire catalog and also focus on their unique visual identity.
• This is an exclusive deal, no Beatles in Guitar Hero any time soon.

A live-blog of the entire conference can be found here.

Update: Variety reports that the game will contain 45 tracks from The Beatles’ 1962 to 1969 EMI catalog. So basically, no Let It Be?

28 songs, 13 repeats from previous rhythm games. That’s 46% folks. Available November 16th in the US. [via]

• Alien Ant Farm - “Smooth Criminal”
• The All-American Rejects - “Dirty Little Secret”
• Blind Melon - “No Rain”
• Blondie - “One Way Or Another”
• Bon Jovi - “You Give Love A Bad Name”
• Boston - “Rock and Roll Band”
• The Darkness - “I Believe In A Thing Called Love”
• Edgar Winter Group - “Free Ride”
• Fall Out Boy - “The Take Over, The Breaks Over”
• Foo Fighters - “The Pretender”
• Free - “All Right Now”
• Jimmy Eat World - “The Middle”
• Joe Satriani - “Satch Boogie”
• Journey - “Any Way You Want It”
• Lenny Kravitz - “Are You Gonna Go My Way”
• Linkin Park - “One Step Closer”
• Los Lobos - “La Bamba”
• Lynyrd Skynyrd - “Sweet Home Alabama (live)”
• Paramore - “Crushcrushcrush”
• Queen - “We Are The Champions”
• R.E.M. - “The One I Love”
• Red Hot Chili Peppers - “Can’t Stop”
• Sammy Hagar - “I Can’t Drive 55”
• Seether - “Remedy”
• Smashing Pumpkins - “Tarantula”
• Stone Temple Pilots - “Down”
• Veruca Salt - “Volcano Girls”
• Weezer - “Buddy Holly”

Scorehero users are finding Guitar Hero: World Tour in short supply at their local Gamestops, and not because they are a hot seller…

I just called Gamestop to see if they had any copies of the band kit and they said it was recalled because of bugs in the instruments. Can anyone confirm this?

Yes, yes we can. Sort of. Activision has released a statement that, while not mentioning an official “recall”, definitely admits a deficiency…

We have learned that certain drum kit controllers manufactured for Guitar Hero World Tour have sensitivity issues. We believe that these controllers are limited to ones in the earlier manufacturing stages. While we believe that this was an isolated manufacturing issue, we are stepping our efforts to randomly test our drum kit controllers so customers can be assured they work properly. In the event any consumers do experience problems with their drum kit controllers associated with sensitivity issues, Activision will soon be offering a drum tuning kit that will enable players to fully optimize their drums.

Our goal would be to immediately address any hardware issues Guitar Hero World Tour players have with the game. Consumers should visit the Activision Publishing customer support website at www.activision.com/support website or call 310 255-2050 in the U.S. where a customer care representative will assist them. Activision is fully committed to the highest quality manufacturing standards, and to satisfying every Guitar Hero World Tour fan so they can enjoy the best musical gaming experience ever created.

So, in order to fix your kit you are going to have to connect it to a pc and twiddle with custom “sensitivity software“. Only own a Mac? Like the kit your having trouble with, your fucked too. Why couldn’t this “sensitivity software” be patched directly into the game? The world may never(soft) know.

Now about those guitars that don’t downstrum….

It’s somewhat official, UK’ers won’t have to repeat for Rock Band 2 the excruciating 6 month “shipping channel” delay they were subjected to with the release of the first game in the series. As a part of their new “Live Your Moment” commercial campaign for the XBox 360, Microsoft is running a commercial targeting music game lovers that features a vacant looking Natalie Portman look-alike with nothing on her mind other than fake-rocking out while spoiling what is surely coming from HMX any day now - an official announcement for RB2 to see release in the UK in November. Watch for yourself below, and let me know if this commercial creeps you out as much as it did me.

I’d give you some background - but frankly - you’ll care about as much as I did. Point is: Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips is a musical badass - even with the smug “because a lot of kids out there think this is actually the way you play guitar” comment. Watch him explain his awesome IRL guitroller-to-oscillator mod in the EW vid below… [via]

Um. HMX? Neversoft? No Flaming Lips yet? Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is ripe for the pickens, methinks.

Npeaen delivers again! My pick is below, the rest after the jump…

Silversun Pickups - Well Thought Out

(more…)

As soon as a GH:WT vid of Eye of the Tiger posted, I’ll add it as well.

• Ramblin’ Man - The Allman Brothers Band
• One Way or Another - Blondie
• Livin’ on a Prayer - Bon Jovi
• Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac
• Everlong - Foo Fighters
• American Woman - The Guess Who
• Mountain Song - Jane’s Addiction
• The Middle - Jimmy Eat World
• Our Truth - Lacuna Coil
• Float On - Modest Mouse
• Lazy Eye - Silversun Pickups
• Today - Smashing Pumpkins
• Feel the Pain - Dinosaur Jr.
• The Kill - 30 Seconds to Mars*
• B.Y.O.B. - System of a Down*
• Monsoon - Tokio Hotel*
• Eye of the Tiger - Survivor

* Technically DLC, not on the RB2 disc.

Thank the maker its only a commercial and not the rumored full-length film he’s recently been jawing about. Click the video below (thx Kotaku!) to check out the first of Ratners Neversoft-commissioned work, starring skater Tony Hawk, baseball player Alex Rodriguez, Olympian Michael Phelps, and basketballer Kobe Bryant all doing their best Risky Business impersonations.

While its not a bad commercial, I get the feeling that Neversoft is trying too hard. They have a lot riding on the success of WT, and nothing short of complete domination of HMX’s RB will be considered a victory. Can commercials like this convert RB owners to the dark side? Can it create new customers for the GH series? Only time will tell…

On a side note, I find it pretty darn ironic that a game that is pretty much a copy of another game is also recycling the same basic commercials they ran for their last game. Or something.