It’s official! MTV Games, the publisher who brought you Rock Band, and more recently Rock Band 2, has scored the holy grail of exclusive licensing: The Beatles. There was some buzz over on the MTV Multiplayer blog yesterday hinting that today could bring such an announcement, but I didn’t pay that much attention, since rumours lead to disappointment more often than they lead to happiness.  Not this time, though!

I don’t know what they had to do to make this happen, but I’m glad they did it, and I know it will be worth it. Beatles licensing is notoriously hard to secure (you can’t even DL their stuff on iTunes), but the gaming Gods have smiled on us all by granting this grand privilege to MTV Games/Harmonix. Hip Hip Hooray!

Instead of releasing the songs (which are reported to span the entire Beatles catalog) as an expansion pack, or digital download, Harmonix is hard at work developing a stand alone Beatles music video game.

I suppose this idea isn’t totally original. I mean, Guitar Hero came out with a stand alone Aerosmith game. Oh, wait, that was total crap. Aerosmith vs. The Beatles? Don’t be silly. Once again, the Rock Band franchise has taken a Guitar Hero idea and made it 1000 times better. Oh, in completely non-game related news, has anyone else heard that Steve Tyler is likely replacing Robert Plant for a Led Zeppelin reunion tour? Gross.

Nobody’s saying how much this actually cost MTV, but I can only guess a dollar figure that would make me physically ill to contemplate. Though when you think about the rising popularity of music games (which recently surpassed sports games to secure the #2 slot in the list of popular game types), and the undisputed awesomeness of Beatles music, a stand alone Beatles game is basically guaranteed to lead to fat stacks of cash for everyone involved.

Harmonix hopes to have it all ready by the 2009 holiday season. I hope it doesn’t cost too much, because I’ll be buying it anyway.

One thing that’s interesting to note is that the game will not be called “Rock Band: Beatles” but will actually have its own brand name, whatever that ends up being.

As The Beatles are in my trifecta of perfect bands (along with R.E.M. and Pink Floyd), this is obviously hugely exciting for me.  They almost can’t screw it up, unless all the songs are cover versions of Beatles tunes.  Like…say…Aerosmith’s version of “Come Together”.  Irony!