Busy Gamer News

It seems like Rock Band news is everywhere this week, despite the fact that (almost) everyone is still powering through Grand Theft Auto IV. Guess Harmonix and EA want a little attention, too.

First, there's this week's weird "Scene Pack 01" ($5.50, or $2 per song) out now for Xbox 360 and due Thursday for PS3:

• "It Hurts" by Angels & Airwaves
• "This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race" by Fall Out Boy (what, no "Grand Theft Autumn"?!)
• "Date with the Night" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Then there's news of a discounted song offer sponsored by McDonald's. Each song is $1 during the week of its promotion (UPDATE: Confirmed for both Xbox 360 and PS3):

• May 6-12: "Rock 'n Roll Band" by Boston and "Crushcrushcrush" by Paramore
• May 13-19: "Shockwave" by Black Tide and "Sugar Magnolia" by Grateful Dead
• May 20-26: "All the Small Things" by Blink 182 and "We Care A Lot" by Faith No More
• May 27-June 2: "Dirty Little Secret" by All-American Rejects and "Gimme Three Steps" by Lynyrd Skynyrd

For all of you PS2 and Wii owners stuck without a download store, EA announced a standalone retail disk with 20 songs due July 15. Since neither system has a hard drive to store the music data, it's reasonable to expect you'll only be able to play the songs on the expansion disk separately from the songs in the main game (lame, but with this eclectic mix you'll wish they were mixed in with more tracks!):

• "The Kill" by 30 Seconds to Mars
• "Move Along" by All American Rejects
• "All the Small Things" by Blink 182
• "More Than a Feeling" by Boston
• "Moonage Daydream" by David Bowie
• "We Care A Lot" by Faith No More
• "Truckin'" by Grateful Dead
• "Die, All Right!" by The Hives
• "Calling Dr. Love" by Kiss
• "Gimme' Three Steps" by Lynyrd Skynyrd
• "March of the Pigs" by Nine Inch Nails
• "Live Forever" by Oasis
• "Crushcrushcrush" by Paramore
• "Synchronicity II" by The Police
• "Little Sister" by Queens of the Stone Age
• "Teenage Lobotomy" by The Ramones
• "Siva" by Smashing Pumpkins
• "Interstate Love Song" by Stone Temple Pilots
• "Buddy Holly" by Weezer
• "Joker & the Thief" by Wolfmother

Finally, there was news that some bonus tracks will be available for fans of Disturbed and South Park. Pre-order the album Indestructible by Disturbed from BestBuy.com to get codes to download the tracks "Inside the Fire" and "Perfect Insanity" for the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band (sorry, PS3 owners). The rest of us will get these tracks sometime in June (price unknown but, based on the recent Motley Crue promotion, possibly only $1 each). And if you're into South Park, the Season 11 DVD set due Aug. 12 will include a 3-song download pack for Rock Band. No hint of the songs or whether they'll be for both PS3 and Xbox 360, but considering that "Timmy!" was in the game we can all start humming our favorite Trey Parker songs now and hope for the best UPDATE: The South Park tracks are apparently an aborted marketing effort that made it into leaked though not final boxart for the DVD set. That said, perhaps the interest expressed by fans will earn us some South Park downloadable songs down the road...