The Beatles: Rock Band Hits 1.7M Sales

The holiday season brought sales for The Beatles: Rock Band under those of Rock Band 2 in a similar period, adding to the softness of the music game market, which declined 46 percent in 2009. The game sold 357,000 units in December in the United States, according to NPD figures cited by a Los Angeles Times blog post, bringing the game's total performance to 1.18 million domestically and 1.7 million units worldwide. Harmonix's last major Rock Band game, 2008's Rock Band 2, moved 1.7 million units in an equivalent time period in the United States alone, according to LA Times-cited figures. Still, the Fab Four have outperformed Neversoft's Guitar Hero 5, which has totaled just under a million units sold. That's a bit of a role reversal: Historically, the Harmonix-created, now Activision-controlled Guitar Hero franchise has significantly outsold its younger competitor. NPD says music game revenue was down 46 percent in 2009, far exceeding the 8 percent year-over-year revenue drop experienced by the industry as a whole. Part of that is due to fewer players now needing to buy costly instrument controllers, but it's clear straight unit sales are way down as well -- the previous major Guitar Hero entry sold 3.4 million copies.