ATV Music: Beatles video game will have tremendous implications
If you’re paying for rights to put the music of the most successful band in history in a video game, you’d better dig deep and cough it up. Considering that not even iTunes got the Beatles into retail, MTV and Harmonix have a very lucrative, and perhaps controversial, task ahead of them.
After the announcement that they will be working on a title featuring the Beatles, MTV and Harmonix have signed themselves into a considerably lucrative deal. The game is being targeted for release during the 2009 holidays, and will be in “an interactive video format.”
“The game is in development,” said Apple Corps CEO Jeff Jones. Apple Corps is the rights holder of the Beatles’ music. “We don’t want to talk about how it will turn out a year from now. We’re in the process of creating the game.”
It makes one wonder about how the music will be put in the game. Like some sacred relic, the Beatles’ music was never remastered and was left untouched, making it unavailable through digital retail like iTunes. It seems that this game will be going where no digital retailer has gone before.
“Maybe the fact that this deal is done will offer an impetus to Apple and EMI,” said Martin Bandier, CEO of Sony/ATV Music Publishing. “We signed a deal that would be considered very rich by the videogame company but fair for the artists. It will have online implications that will be enormous.”
As early as now, I’m wondering how the game will come out. How much it’ll cost is a different story altogether. I guess we’ll just have to play by ear for now.
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