page_title: Rock Band
section_title: Cultural impact
hierarchical_section_title: Rock Band / Cultural impact
caption_attribution_description: English: People playing Rock Band 3 at San Diego Comic Con International 2010.
context_page_description: Rock Band is a series of rhythm games developed by Harmonix, principally for home video game consoles. Based on their previous development work from the Guitar Hero series, the main Rock Band games has players use game controllers modeled after musical instruments and microphones to perform the lead guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, drums and vocal parts of numerous licensed songs across a wide range of genres though mostly focusing on rock music by matching scrolling musical notes patterns shown on screen. Certain games support the use of "Pro" instruments that require special controllers that more closely mimic the playing of real instruments, providing a higher challenge to players. Players are scored for successfully-hit notes, while may fail a song if they miss too many notes. The series has featured numerous game modes, and supports both local and online multiplayer modes where up to four players in most modes can perform together.
context_section_description: Like Guitar Hero, Rock Band has influenced the music culture. Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy, the founders of Harmonix, were together named in Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of 2008 for their creation of Rock Band. In the article, guitarist Steven Van Zandt claims, "in the history of rock 'n' roll, Rock Band may just turn out to be up there with the rise of FM radio, CDs or MTV." Both were awarded the 2009 Game Developers Choice Pioneer Award for their influence on music video games culminating with Rock Band, and the 2010 USA Network's "Character Approved" Award for New Media in 2010 for the impact that their vision and leadership for Rock Band has had on the social nature of the game. A reality television show, Rock Band 2: The Stars, was created by VH1, featuring several players performing and being eliminated by judges Alice Cooper and Sebastian Bach. The Pennsylvania-based band, The Jellybricks, released a viral video of their song "Ruin Us" which is overplayed on footage from Rock Band 2 using avatars resembling the band members.
  Rock Band appeared briefly in the "Whale Whores" episode of the South Park animated TV series, where Cartman, along with Kyle and Kenny, sang to Lady Gaga's "Poker Face"; about 5 months after the airing, Harmonix announced "Poker Face" with vocals by Cartman would be available as downloadable content for the game, along with other Lady Gaga songs featuring her vocals. An episode of the sitcom The Office, "The Chump", alluded to Rock Band: Billy Joel, to which Entertainment Weekly's Darren Franich commented that "let’s hope never actually exists ever". Billy Joel, on reading this review, contacted his agents and authorized his songs to be used within the game as a means to snub Franich. The Los Angeles Times suggests that Rock Band, particularly The Beatles: Rock Band, has influenced many of the contestants in the preliminaries for the 9th season of American Idol to use songs that have appeared in these games for their auditions.
  In terms of sales, Rock Band trailed the Guitar Hero series, selling only 4 million units in 2007 compared to Guitar Hero's 11.8 million.  In 2008, Rock Band was the third highest brand, trailing Guitar Hero and the Mario series, with $662M in total sales for the year. Over 5.3 million copies of the games were sold in 2008, with 3.8 million of those in instrument-bundled packages. Wedbush Securities gaming analyst Michael Pachter believed that both game series would sell another 3 million units each by early 2009. Regardless, Rock Band did not generate profits for Viacom due to the cost of developing and selling the instrument peripherals. As a result, Viacom, MTV Games, and Harmonix shifted the Rock Band series into one that focused on selling songs through additional software discs and downloadable content, letting others, such as Activision, handle the creation of the game controllers.
  Sales of downloadable songs have been in favor of hard rock bands; Mötley Crüe's single "Saints of Los Angeles", debuting as a Rock Band track at the same time as the release of the album of the same name, saw 48,000 Rock Band downloads and 14,000 iTunes downloads during its first week of release.  The popularity of some tracks have also led to groups considering releasing more material for the game. Rush's alternate version of "Working Man" released only for Rock Band was met with so much praise from players of Rock Band that the group released the song for download through iTunes, as well as considered making full albums available, which they in turn did when they released their album Moving Pictures in full on the platform soon after. Guns N' Roses had delayed their long-awaited album Chinese Democracy so often, many doubted it would ever be released; however, the Rock Band 2 debut of the song "Shackler's Revenge" was thought to be the precursor to the release of Chinese Democracy; the album was indeed released in November 2008 and was later made available as a downloadable album for the Rock Band games.
  Rock Band's downloadable content has been given aw
caption: Fans try Rock Band 3 at a Comic Con convention in 2010.
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