Harmonix and MTV Games have announced that Judas Priest’s 1982 classic album, “Screaming For Vengeance” will be the first complete album to be added to Rock Band’s downloadable content catalog on both the Xbox Live Marketplace and the PlayStation Store.
The album will hit XBL on April 22nd and the PSN two days later. Each track will cost $1.99 USD for individual songs or $15 USD for the full album.
Although full album releases were promised before Rock Band even hit retail shelves, this is the first available album, 5 months after the game’s release. Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos says “…a big reason that it’s taken us so long to get them to market is that the actual technical delivery of the assets required for any one song - they’re actually pretty complicated. You’re often dealing with masters for the older stuff that were recorded on analog. Often it takes a long time to even locate those masters. The right takes and the right edits have to be found, and in some cases old gear that’s not in use anymore has to be resuscitated to transfer the stuff to digital.”
Rigopulos also says $1.99 will be standard for individual tracks but the album prices will be variable. “There’s not going to be a standard album pricing. It’s going to be a function of how many songs are included in the album…essentially there will be a volume discount apply.”
The companies also revealed that the next full album will be the self-titled album from “The Cars.”
Result for: 5 months
Apple has announced today with their fiscal Q4 financial statements that the recent economic downturn is not effecting them as badly as other mobile phone vendors and that smartphone sales continue to flourish.
The company has so far sold 6.9 million iPhone 3G units, eclipsing the 6.1 BlackBerry sales pushed by RIM in the same quarter.
“Apple outsold RIM last quarter, and this is a milestone for us. RIM is a good company that makes good products, and so it is surprising that we could outsell them in any quarter after only 15 months in the market,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
iPhone revenue hit $4.6 billion for the Q3 2008 making Apple the third largest mobile phone vendor in terms of revenue behind Nokia and Samsung. Behind Apple are such big names as Sony, LG, Motorola and RIM.
With the high iPhone 3G sales, Apple has surpassed its goal of selling 10 million iPhone (1st gen and 3G) units for 2008, and there is still the holiday season to come.
“Not bad for being in the market for only 15 months,” added Jobs.
Result for: 5 months
The infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay has hit another milestone, 12 million peers. Making the announcement more impressive, is that only 5 months ago the site was at 8.5 million peers served.
More intriguing, from a torrent standpoint, is that TPB admin brokep says that since 2004 that amount of actual seeders on the site has increased substantially compared to hit-and-run leechers. He continues on that in 2004 only 20 percent of peers were seeding but that that number has increased to almost 50 percent, a huge number for a public torrent tracker.
Brokep added, “We have more seeders than leechers now. It was like 25% seeders 75% leechers [in 2004/2005], since then it’s gradually shifted over to 50/50.″
As if 12 million peers wasn’t enough, brokep and the rest of TPB staff want a new milestone, and soon. “What we want you to do is to spread the word to your friends and make more people share files! Let’s break 15 million - and 20!”
