A poster at the Rock Band forums recently spotted a commercial on VH1 that promised new DLC from The Who to coincide with the band’s halftime performance at the Super Bowl on February 7. According to the original post, the commercial promised that “The Who’s performance at the Super Bowl performance would be available after the game for Rock Band.”

Neat stunt, eh? Here’s the interesting thing: Pete Townshend has said that the halftime show would be a medley of some of their best-known tracks. Speaking to Billboard, he specifically mentioned “Baba O’Riley,” “Pinball Wizard,” “a bit of the close of ‘Tommy,’” “Who Are You,” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” “It’s quite a saga,” Townshend said.

Now, how exactly would Harmonix be able to whip up Rock Band versions of a live performance within a day? Well, the sort of uncomfortable secret about Super Bowl Halftime performances is that they’re almost never really live. The vocals usually are, since those are the hardest to fake convincingly, but the other instruments are usually prerecorded, to avoid hassles of setup, sound check, and so on — you know, to keep everything moving smoothly for the sponsors. So it’s likely that Harmonix was able to get hold of those recordings.

But even if the show does turn out to be entirely live this year (something that really wouldn’t surprise me, given that The Who certainly has enough pull to demand it, and enough talent and experience to pull it off), there would be weeks — perhaps months — of rehearsals. For a production this big, every possible element of the performance would be scripted; the set list would be decided far in advance, and the transitions would all be worked out. So it would be absolutely possible to create a very accurate note chart from just a recording of one of those rehearsals…especially given the fact that most of these songs are already available in the Rock Band library — so much of the tracking is already done.

Still, I’m curious to see how this is handled. For example, price: The screen shot above shows prominent branding by Bridgestone, sponsors of this year’s halftime show, which leads me to believe the costs of the DLC release could be shouldered by Bridgestone — meaning the tracks could be free. I’m also curious if the medley will be released as a single track, letting players essentially play through the entire show as performed. I think that’d be neat.

But of course this is all just speculation; Harmonix hasn’t even made any official confirmation. But these VH1 commercial leaks have turned out to be true in the past, so I’m considering this very likely.

UPDATE: Harmonix just made it official, but we still don’t know exactly what songs will be featured in the “S-mashup.” It’ll be available right after the Super Bowl on Wii and 360 for the usual $2 equivalents, with PS3 hitting at a later time.

[Read, via RockBandAide | image via b70x7n]