Rock Band download store... finally

How in the world did MTV/Harmonix manage to sell 6 million "Rock Band" track downloads so far? I ask not because the game isn't awesome (it is) or because there aren't some great songs to download (there are), but because the the downloads are so damned hard to find.

Until today, there was no way to access the downloadable tracks from the game. On Xbox 360, you had to go to the console menu, click on "game store," click "more" or "other" (something like that), click the "music" category, then click on  "rock band," then scroll through the available song titles . OK, that's not exactly the process, but it was definitely at least four clicks and a major, confusing pain in the ass.

Then when you find the songs, the information scrolls very slowly on the right before you finally find the name of the artist and whether it was a cover. Basically, it's a nightmare. The fact that people went through that six million times is amazing to me, and definitely a testament to how great "Rock Band" is.

That number's going to get a whole lot bigger now that MTV/Harmonix has finally released an update with a really well designed music store accessible from the game's main menu. Wired's Game/Life blog (from whom I stole the above screenshot) has a great rundown. Suffice it to say it's easy to navigate, has album art, difficult ratings, previews... it basically looks kind of like what we've come to expect from music download services like iTunes and Rhapsody.

It's a shame it took Harmonix this long to launch the store (albeit understandable given the crazy tight schedule for "Rock Band's" release) but at least they knew what they needed to do and got it right.

(This is also, it's worth noting, way better in design and depth of content than what "Guitar Hero III" offers.)