'Rock Band' Hits $1 billion Sales Milestone

Video game sales just went crazy in little over a year

It only took 'Rock Band’ video game 15 months to surpass the $1 billion mark in North America, MTV Games, a part of Viacom's MTV Networks, Harmonix, the leader in developing music-based games, and distribution partner Electronic Arts Inc. have announced.

The game offers songs from popular bands like Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and basically lets you pretend for a while you’ve switched places with your idols while playing along on different instruments.

Of course, ’Rock Band’s main rival is Guitar Hero which has announced the launch of the much anticipated ‘Metallica: Guitar Hero’ on March 29. It will be interesting to watch the competition between the two especially that ‘Rock Band’ have also announced the release of ‘The Beatles:Rock Band’ on September 29.

Although MTV didn't say exactly how many units it took to reach $1 billion, they were pretty clear revealing that translated to overall revenue, Rock Band topped the charts of the most sold game of 2008.

‘Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock’ exceeded $1 billion in sales back in 2007 but it needed 26 months to reach the same sales plateau.