One Thing I Can Tell You Is You Got To Be Free Words Of Love
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From the rumor mill:
Beatles seek help to join the video game revolution By Joshua Chaffin in New York and Chris Nuttall in San,Francisco Published: June 23 2008 03:00 | Last updated: June 23 2008 03:00
Beatles representatives are in talks with two companies to create a Beatles-themed video game in a move that could pave the way for a broader licensing of the Fab Four's catalogue.
The representatives have held discussions with both Acti-vision and MTV Games, the respective makers of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, in which players strum along to favourite songs or form virtual bands.
A final deal would be worth several million dollars, according to a person familiar with the talks, and could be reached in a matter of weeks. However, it would have first to win the blessing of both Apple Corps, the company established by the band to oversee its business interests, and EMI, the UK music group that owns the Beatles master recordings. Both declined to comment.
The surviving Beatles and their heirs have been cautious about exploiting their material on new platforms. They were slow to re-issue their albums on compact disc.
In spite of repeated discussions, EMI and Apple Corps have yet to license Beatles recordings for digital use, including for sale through Apple's iTunes music store.
Apple Corps has become more active in recent months since Jeff Jones took over as chief executive.
The company, whose board includes Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono Lennon, has allowed Beatles compositions to be used on American Idol and in a Las Vegas show.
Martin Bandier, chief executive of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, which controls more than 200 Beatles copyrights, said the exposure on American Idol had yielded a number of inquiries, including from mobile phone carriers.
One Thing I Can Tell You Is You Got To Be Free Words Of Love
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New York ‘Times’ Editorial Board Weighs In on Rumored Beatles Video Game
Possible proof that all the world's newsmakers are on vacation this week: The New York Times editorial board has, at last, weighed in on the possible Beatles video game (actually, they did yesterday, but we missed it since we don't typically get our news about Beatles video games from the Times' editorial page). So far, the game itself is just a rumor; Apple Corps are reportedly in talks with Activision and MTV Games about the possibility of bringing the Beatles catalogue to a version of Guitar Hero or Rock Band (though, according to an MTV Games spokesman, "We are talking to virtually every major rock artist all the time about ways we might get them involved in Rock Band"). But the Times apparently felt strong enough that they wanted to have their say while it still might make a difference.
For fans of a certain age, those of us who literally grew up with the Beatles, the idea [of a Beatles-themed video game] produces a certain sense of loss" they write. "When it comes time to script this new game, we hope the developers will notice that the Beatles' two early movies … embed the band's music in action that's nearly as frenetic and sweetly fun as anything a frenetic kid with a game controller could ask for. We would like to hope that it might also be about the extraordinary musical chemistry of Lennon and McCartney, those long, long hours at Abbey Road and the unreal sense of discovery and freshness that came out of that studio.
That's fine, we guess. But we just hope the developers will consider how badly we want to rock out to "Helter Skelter" and "Glass Onion."
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