How 'Beatles: Rock Band' came together

The appearance by Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr at the Microsoft Xbox E3 press briefing on Monday caught the world by surprise, and turned into a perfect way to formally introduce 'Beatles: Rock Band.'

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

LOS ANGELES--If you were among the thousands of people at Microsoft's E3 press briefing on Monday, it's a pretty sure bet that the appearance on-stage there of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Yoko Ono was one of the most unexpected things imaginable.

But if you think about it, the very existence of the game that led to their showing up during the Xbox press briefing, Harmonix and MTV Games' "Beatles: Rock Band," is even more surprising. After all, the Beatles have, over the years, maintained a stranglehold over control of their music. For example the Beatles are still the holy grail that iTunes has not yet been able to corral.

The game will be released on September 9 (09.09.09) on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, and the Wii.

So how did the game come to pass?

Since the two remaining Beatles weren't able to come to the phone for this article, I decided to stop by the Harmonix booth at E3 and ask the game's lead designer, Chris Foster, for the skinny behind what has got to be one of the biggest coups in video gaming history.

Foster said the story begins a couple of years ago, when MTV President Van Toffler ran into Dhani Harrison, son of the late Beatles guitarist George Harrison, in some random social setting.

"It was just sort of through happenstance," Foster said. "Dhani was a big 'Rock Band' fan, and there was this sort of, 'Wouldn't it be nice if...but it'll never happen.'"

Beatles RockBand rocks E3

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But being a "Rock Band" fan, Dhani Harrison took his idea to Harmonix CEO and co-founder Alex Rigopulos and began a conversation about what a Beatles version of "Rock Band" could be. Foster said that the idea seemed like a huge challenge, but, deciding to pursue it, Harrison began evangelizing the idea to Apple Corps, the Beatles' U.K. publisher, and its shareholders, particularly McCartney, Starr, and Ono.

"So then, from that point, it was just sort of getting them familiar with ('Rock Band')," Foster said, "and getting them understanding what the game could be like."

By now, the discussions were far enough along that Harmonix put together a simple demo of the kind of music and conceptual art that could be used in the game, Foster said.

And, amazingly, inexplicably, it worked.

Creative partners
"At that point," Foster recalled, things "moved to (the Beatles) being creative partners" in the project. One of the most vital things to happen at that point was the introduction of music producer Giles Martin to the "Rock Band" project. Martin, the son of the Beatles' original producer, George Martin, helped Cirque du Soleil put together its Beatles show, "Love."

That was crucial, Foster said, because Martin was able to help solve one of the most important problems any Beatles "Rock Band" game would have, adding multitrack capabilities.

"We needed multitrack," Foster said, "because in 'Rock Band,' (players) need to get (individual) feedback about whether they're playing well or not. So with all those pieces in place, we were able to do a demo of what the music (in the game) would be like."

As things progressed, the developers knew that to make the game feel authentic, they'd have to offer players real Beatles venues to play in. So they worked to add famous Beatles locations like Liverpool's famous Cavern Club, the Ed Sullivan theater, Shea Stadium, the Budokan in Tokyo, and the rooftop at Apple Corps.

Then, Foster said, the development team came up with the idea for adding psychedelic dreamscape visions to the game. The game's trailer (see below) does a great job of demonstrating that element, as do some of the best pieces of Cirque du Soleil's "Love."

'We respected them and their music'
To Foster, the chief reason that the improbable game ever came together at all is that "they liked that we respected them and respected their music. I don't want to put words in their mouths, but what was important to us was that we respected them."

That's one reason that the development team made sure to include venues where the Beatles had actually played famous shows. "We weren't shoving them into live venues that didn't make sense," he said.

Another important factor was the developers' adding the ability to include vocal harmonies as part of game play.

"Their music is so much about harmonies," he said. Adding vocal harmonies was something that had never been done in "Rock Band" before, but it was considered vital to accurately representing the Beatles' music in the game.

And that also presented the developers with a hurdle they had to clear.

"The challenge (was) making it so vocal harmonies were fun and challenging, but really accessible, and finding a way to put that in the game, without overwhelming" players, Foster said. "(We didn't want to make them) feel like they failed to sing like the Beatles."

Foster acknowledged that contracting with the Beatles was a huge win for Harmonix, especially when it's been clear for some time that "lots of people were thinking about doing it."

The game is already being anxiously awaited by players, developers, and industry executives alike, and for both game play and business reasons.

"Clearly, (the Beatles) saw an opportunity of reintroducing their music to the current music-loving consumer and it makes perfect sense for them as they try and manage their brand," said Nintendo President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime. "So I think it makes a lot of sense and, candidly, what the music industry is finding is that the games industry is a great way to drive music sales."

And for Microsoft, having McCartney, Starr, and Ono take the stage at the Xbox press briefing at the University of Southern California's Galen Center was a gigantic victory. A Microsoft spokesperson said that the appearance came about because the company is always talking to its publisher partners, including, in this case, MTV Games. And that as "Beatles: Rock Band" progressed, the Beatles decided that the Xbox press briefing would be a very appropriate place to announce the game.

Note to Sony and Nintendo: Work harder at finessing those publisher partner contacts, and next time, maybe the stars will pick your E3 briefing.

To Foster, a big part of what makes the game seem authentic was that the designers concentrated on "telling the Beatles' story" but still finding a way to do so in the context of a "Rock Band" game that fans of both the band and the game franchise would appreciate and recognize. And also because the game will appeal to even the youngest Beatles fans.

He explained that the Harmonix team liked the idea of bringing new, younger audiences to the Beatles for the first time. But reality soon disabused them of that notion.

"The (Beatles') music is like the air we breathe," Foster said, "and it catches every generation...It's sort of presumptuous to think you can introduce the Beatles to anyone."

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Judge halts suits over NSA wiretapping

A federal judge in San Francisco has tossed out a slew of lawsuits filed against AT&T and other telecommunications companies alleged to have illegally opened their networks to the National Security Agency.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker on Wednesday ruled that, thanks to a 2008 federal law retroactively immunizing those companies, approximately 46 lawsuits brought by civil liberties groups and class action lawyers will be dismissed.

Congress has created a "'focused immunity' for private entities who assisted the government with activities that allegedly violated plaintiffs' constitutional rights," Walker wrote in a 46-page opinion. That has not, he said, "affected plaintiffs' underlying constitutional rights."

Wednesday's ruling is a bitter defeat to groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, which are coordinating the lawsuits over warrantless wiretapping. They had hoped to convince the judge that the law improperly infringed upon the separation of powers described in the U.S. Constitution and handed too much power to the executive branch.

The 2008 law, called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, was approved by a Democratic-controlled Congress last summer. As a senator, President Obama voted for the measure even though he hadpreviously pledged to oppose it.

It says that no "civil action" may take place in state or federal court "against any person for providing assistance to an element of the intelligence community"--and will be automatically dismissed as long as the attorney general claims the surveillance was authorized.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey sent the court a letter saying the surveillance was authorized, but without offering any further information. The Justice Department under President Obama has not changed its position.

EFF said it would appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. "We're deeply disappointed in Judge Walker's ruling today," EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn said in a statement. "The retroactive immunity law unconstitutionally takes away Americans' claims arising out of the First and Fourth Amendments, violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution, and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law."

The ruling does not affect lawsuits that have been filed directly against the NSA or other government agencies, including the EFF's Jewel v. NSA case. (A congressional report accompanying the 2008 law explicitly says: "Nothing in this bill is intended to affect these suits against the government or individual government officials.")

Walker left one possible opening for EFF, ACLU, and their allies. Because the 2008 law exempts surveillance "authorized by the president" during the time from September 11, 2001 and January 17, 2007, telecom firms could be held liable if they surreptitiously cooperated with NSA or other agencies more recently.

He gave the plaintiffs 30 days to amend their complaint to focus on surveillance that took place after January 17, 2007, the date that President Bush decided to amend the program to include supervision by courts.

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Shuttle Endeavour cleared for June 13 launch

While the shuttle Endeavour's crew reviewed emergency procedures at the launch pad Wednesday, NASA managers held an executive-level flight readiness review and cleared the ship for blastoff June 13 on a complex space station assembly mission.

NASA Launch Director Pete Nickolenko, directing his first shuttle launch campaign, said there is no contingency time left in the schedule to handle unexpected problems. But so far, the shuttle's systems are checking out normally and the team is optimistic about starting the countdown next Wednesday for a launch try one week from Saturday.

"We're running on all cylinders right now," Nickolenko said. "We're hitting our stride."

Over the past month, NASA launched the shuttle Atlantis on a successful mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, the Russian space agency launched an additional three crew members to the International Space Station, Endeavour was moved from pad 39B to pad 39A for final processing, and Atlantis was returned to Florida from California where it landed May 24.

Endeavour's crew--commander Mark Polansky, pilot Douglas Hurley, flight engineer Julie Payette, David Wolf, Christopher Cassidy, Thomas Marshburn, and space station flight engineer Timothy Kopra--flew to Florida on Tuesday and reviewed emergency procedures at the pad Wednesday. All seven plan to strap in aboard the shuttle Thursday for a dress-rehearsal countdown.

Aboard the space station, meanwhile, commander Gennady Padalka and NASA flight engineer Michael Barratt plan to carry out two spacewalks, one Friday and the other next Wednesday, to rig the Zvezda command module for the eventual attachment of another docking port.

A few hours after the spacewalk ends, NASA will start Endeavour's countdown.

"It's been a really amazing schedule over the last couple of months," Polansky said Wednesday at the launch pad. "It's tight from the standpoint that we're here in Florida to climb in the vehicle tomorrow. We're going to go back home, take a day off, go into quarantine Saturday, come back down here Monday night and launch next Saturday. I mean, that's really tight.

"But I know from a training perspective, we're ready," he said. "It would be great if we could just climb in and go tomorrow, but I think our families would be a little upset because they're not here!"

The shuttle Endeavour's crew chats before answering questions from reporters at launch pad 39A.

(Credit: William Harwood)

The 16-day flight features five spacewalks to install an external experiment platform on the Japanese Kibo research module, to swap out batteries in the station's oldest set of solar arrays, and to deliver critical spare parts. Endeavour also will ferry Kopra to the lab complex for an extended stay and bring Japanese station flier Koichi Wakata back to Earth.

Endeavour was hauled to pad 39B in April to serve as a rescue vehicle for the crew of Atlantis. In the Hubble Space Telescope's orbit, the Atlantis astronauts could not seek safe haven aboard the space station if any major problem developed that might prevent a safe re-entry.

Engineers actually started a countdown for Endeavour late in Atlantis' mission to keep the rescue option open as long as possible. As it turned out, no such flight was needed and after bad weather blocked multiple attempts to bring Atlantis back to Florida, the ship was diverted to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

But the wisdom of processing Endeavour in parallel was made clear during a post-landing inspection of Atlantis. Space debris, a greater threat at Hubble's high altitude, apparently hit one of the shuttle's braking rocket nozzles, damaging the inner and outer surfaces.

NASA flight directors and mission managers, at the Kennedy Space Center for shuttle Endeavour's flight readiness review, watch the shuttle Atlantis' arrival after a ferry flight from California atop a 747 jumbo jet.

(Credit: Ben Cooper/Spaceflightnow.com)

The shuttle spent much of the mission flying tail first to shield more sensitive areas from debris impacts and small dings are not unusual. But Mike Moses, director of shuttle integration at the Kennedy Space Center, said this impact appeared to be on the high end of the scale.

As it now stands, NASA will have only three days to get Endeavour off the pad or the flight will be delayed until after the planned June 17 launch of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Going into the campaign, Nickolenko said the team would make two back-to-back attempts if necessary, but not three.

If the launch is delayed, and if the lunar orbiter takes off on time, NASA may be able to make additional attempts to launch Endeavour on June 19 and 20. After that, the flight would slip to July 11 because of temperature constraints related to the space station's orbit.

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Intel gets official with new Core i7, mobile chips

Intel has updated its price list with new processors, including new Core i7 chips and a bevy of mobile models.

HP m9600T features the top-of-the-line Core i7 975

(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)

Many gamers have been waiting for the update of the "Nehalem" Core i7, which was first introduced in November of last year. Intel's June 2 update includes the newly minted i7-975 (8M L3 cache, 4 cores, 8 threads, 3.33GHz, 6.4 GT/s QPI). This is priced at $999.

For the uninitiated, threads effectively double the number of tasks a processor can do, GT/s stands for Giga Transfers per second, and QPI is Intel's new Quick Path Interconnect technology.

But there's more. The i7-950 boasts identical specifications except for a lower 3.06GHz clock speed and 4.8 GT/s. It is priced at $562.

Hewlett-Packard's m9600T tower can be configured with the i7-975 and a 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 graphics card for just over $1,900.

Other vendors such as Falcon Northwest offer decked-out systems at a big price. The Falcon Northwest Mach V is priced at more than $4,000 with 6GB of memory, 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 graphics card, and a 256GB solid-state drive.

Equally anticipated are the new Intel ULV (ultra-low-voltage) processors. Though some of these were were listed at the end of March (such as the 5-watt, single-core SU3500 and 10-watt, dual-core SU9600), the 10-watt Pentium architecture-based SU2700 (1 core, 2M Cache, 1.30 GHz, 800MHz front-side bus) is new. Intel is not listing this chip, nor is it publishing a price. Though notebooks with this chip are expected to go as low as $499, according to Intel.

Laptops using the ULV chips include the ultra-thin Asus UX30, which will feature the 1.6GHz SU9600, among other chips, and the MSI X340 X-Slim, which sports the SU3500.

Intel also listed new mainstream mobile processors, including the 35-watt T9900 (6M L2 cache, 2 cores, 2 threads, 3.06GHz, 1066MHz FSB). This goes for $530.

Also listed as new is the 28-watt P9700 (6M L2 cache, 2 cores, 2 threads, 2.80GHz, 1066MHz FSB). This lists for $348. The existing T9600 (2.8GHz) fell in price 40 percent to $316 from $530.

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Yahoo sues NFL players group over fantasy stats

Yahoo's StatTracker, a premium service, provides fantasy team owners statistical updates on players moments after they're involved in plays.

(Credit: Yahoo)

Yahoo has filed a lawsuit against the NFL Players Association, contending that it shouldn't be forced to pay royalties for using players' names, statistics, and photos in its online fantasy football game because the information is publicly available.

The complaint (PDF), which was filed Monday in U.S. District Court for Minnesota, alleges that the players group has threatened to sue the Internet giant if it doesn't pay licensing fees for the information. Yahoo had licensing agreements with the players union for previous football seasons, but the last of those deals expired on March 1, according to the complaint.

Yahoo claims it no longer needs the union's permission to use the players' information, citing an April court decision in a similar case between the players group and CBS Interactive (the parent company of CNET). The court in that case found that CBS Interactive didn't have to pay for use of football players' names or statistics because the information was already in the public domain. The players association is currently appealing that decision.

Major League Baseball lost a similar case in 2007 to CBC Distribution and Marketing--a Missouri company that sells fantasy sports products via the Web, e-mail, regular mail, and phone. MLB's Internet media arm, later joined by the pro-baseball players' union, had claimed that CBC was using baseball players' names and statistics without a license, thereby violating the players' rights to publicity under state intellectual property laws.

CBC won at the district court level and again at the appeals court level, which held that the company's "first amendment rights in offering its fantasy baseball products supersede the players' rights of publicity."

The lawsuit asks the court to declare that Yahoo's fantasy game business does not violate any rights of publicity owned or controlled by the players group, and prevent the players group from interfering with or threatening Yahoo's fantasy game business.

As many as 15 million people participate in fantasy football leagues, generating more than $1 billion a year in revenue, according to court documents filed in that case.

Carl Francis, director of communications for the NFL Players Association, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

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Does Opera outperform iPhone's Safari browser?

(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)

The problem with statistics is that it's too easy to jigger data down to numbers that prove in the end how quickly the exercise can resemble art as much as science. Take the latest stats regarding Opera's mobile performance, for instance. StatCounter's Tuesday graph showed proof of Opera's climb above the iPhone's Safari browser for the month of May.

Yet the claim that "Opera took 24.6 percent of the worldwide market compared to 22.3 percent for iPhone" is quickly followed by the admission that one only needs to calculate page views from the iPod Touch for mobile Safari to bypass Opera's lead. Web surfing from the Touch alone represents 14.9 percent of May's mobile browsing, according to StatCounter. Add it to iPhone's browser score and Safari's 37.2 percent overall market share quickly outpaces Opera's not-quite-25 percent.

The deeper you dive, the murkier it gets. What StatCounter didn't make clear in this report, and what is absolutely essential to gauging the popularity of one browser solution over another, is which Opera browser StatCounter counted. Was it Opera Mini, the build for Java phones? Or Opera Mobile, which works with Windows Mobile andSymbian platforms? Or was it both? If the final count indeed includes page views from all the browsers powered by Opera Software, then it could also cover white labeled browsing from a number of Archos personal media players and from the Nintendo DSI. If it doesn't, should it?

Even Opera isn't totally certain what StatCounter's methodology sucks in, though a spokesperson did tell CNET that the company puts a lot of faith into StatCounter's figures. A representative at StatCounter was not immediately available for comment.

Opera versus Safari, or iPhone versus everything else?

You might also wonder if this statistical volley between Opera and Safari faithfully compares apples to apples, or if it is in effect one more measure that pits the iPhone and iPod Touch against other handsets. After all, iPhone accounts for 10 percent global smartphone market share while Symbian phones alone hold nearly 50 percent of the rest. By all logic, iPhone's Safari shouldn't come close to generating the greater-than-20 percent of the world's mobile traffic StatCounter says it has.

And yet, since Apple has shut out all browsing competition on the iPhone, I argue that the browser's seeming popularity is more a testament to the hardware's browsing-friendliness than it is to the browsing vehicle itself. In other words, it appears that more people browse more often on the iPhone than they do from other mobile phones. Would we see similar results were Nokia to lock out third-party browsers, too? Or perhaps Apple's minimalisticmonopolistic limited approach to handsets and mobile browsers is one key to Safari's success. The irony, of course, is that Apple isn't ideologically selling its browser the way Opera is. It's selling devices, plus brand confidence and Apple's "cool factor" appeal.

So, does all this add up to a hollow numbers victory for Opera?

Not necessarily. Whether Opera or iPhone's Safari (plus iPod Touch) is truly in the lead, the mobile browser's (or browsers') numbers are up. Following StatCounter's stats, Opera's mobile browser almost fully recovered in May from a steady three percent decline since January to April 2009. In January, StatCounter called Opera out at 24.69 percent of the mobile browsing market, 0.05 percent higher than it is this month. However the usage numbers shake out this month, that turnaround, at least, is something Opera can unquestioningly be proud of.

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Palm Pre reviewed: Does it live up to the hype?

We haven't seen so much buzz over a phone since the iPhone, but for the past six months, all eyes have been on the Palm Pre.

Introduced at CES 2009, the Palm Pre quickly became the most anticipated phone of the year, not only for what it meant for Palm and Sprint--two companies struggling behind their competitors--but also for what the device promised. The multitasking features, the notification system, a physical keyboard, multitouch screen--all these factors combined made it, in our opinion, the most legitimate rival to the iPhone yet.

We all know the six months that followed the Pre's debut were a little tortuous: the long wait for an availability date and pricing; the not being able to touch the Pre without supervision.

Well, now that is all over. While the June 6 release is still a couple of days away, we've been lucky enough to spend the past few days with the final product, poring over every detail of the device. Does it live up to all the hype? Well, you'll have to read our full review to find out. And get comfy: the review is a bit long, but there's a lot to talk about. Also, check out our Palm Pre screenshots gallery to get a more in-depth look at the Palm webOS.

Read CNET full review of the Palm Pre.
Palm Pre unboxing video

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