Today’s a big day for DLC in the Rock Band world; not only do we get those 10 great Queen tracks, but owners of The Beatles: Rock Band get access to the Beatle’s legendary Abbey Road
Now, the pricing and structure is a little odd here, so we’ll take this slow. First of all, let’s look at PS3 and 360. Only three songs are available as singles: “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “Oh! Darling,” and “Because.” Those go at the standard rate of $1.99 or 160 Microsoft Points apiece.
If you want the rest of the tracks, you’ll need to pick up the entire “Complete The Album Pack” to, you know, complete the album. That includes the three singles, plus the entire B-side medley, which can be played in one 16-minute session: “You Never Give Me Your Money,” “Sun King,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Polythene Pam,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight” and “The End.”
The B-side tracks can also be played in groups of one, two, or three tunes: “You Never Give Me Your Money” and all 23 seconds of “Her Majesty” (which follows “The End” but isn’t really part of the medley) can be played individually; “Sun King” is played with “Mean Mr. Mustard”; “Polythene Pam” is played with “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”; and “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” and “The End” are played in sequence. They’re broken up this way so that there aren’t any jarring stops and starts, you know?
The whole album will run you the promised price of $16.99 on PS3, or 1360 MS Points on 360.
Now let’s talk about Wii. Wii owners get two more songs available for singles: “You Never Give Me Your Money” and “Her Majesty.” The four song-length singles are 200 Wii Points, with the much shorter “Her Majesty” running 100 Wii.
The rest of the album is available in three 2-packs: “Sun King” and “Mean Mr. Mustard”; “Polythene Pam” and “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”; and “Golden Slumbers” and “Carry That Weight.” (“The End” is technically part of that last two-pack, but it’s already on the disc.) These 2-packs run 350 Wii Points each, or $3.50.
So you’ll pay $2.50 more on Wii to get the whole album, but you get a little more flexibility if you don’t want the whole thing.
These hit 360 and Wii today, and PS3 on Thursday. Make sense? Good.
Splitting up Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam seems like a bizarre choice since on the album those run right into each other. I feel like this might break the flow a little, but we’ll see.