Every week we get loads and loads of new tracks for Rock Band, but next week's batch is kinda special because apart from Journey, Pat Benatar, Glasvegas, and Von Bondies adding tracks for the music game, they will be joined by an icon who's arguably more popular than them - a yellow quadrilateral sea-dweller named SpongeBob Squarepants.

If you're not enough of a Pearl Jam fan to buy the re-release of their album "Ten," then maybe this will tip the scales. Best Buy is holding a promo that will allow you to download three Rock Band tracks (from Pearl Jam of course) for free with every purchase of the album.

Its not over five thouzaaaaaand!

News broke earlier about how Harmonix wanted to release more than 5,000 songs as DLC for Rock Band by the end of the year. Epic? Yes. Possible? Nuh-uh. Harmonix was contacted to set things straight and guess what? It was a misunderstanding.

Can't find a song worth playing in Rock Band? Harmonix has you covered. According to a Yahoo news report, they're expecting to increase the number of available songs this year to as many as 5,000. Since they only have around 500 right now, I'm rather curious to see how they're going to jump that up tenfold.

Forbes recently accused Rock Band of being a "shameless knockoff" of Guitar Hero, only with added peripherals. Shame on you, Forbes. You know how much the truth hurts. EA responded to the accusation with a very firm no comment statement.

Irony in the full article.

So you think you can play a song upside-down, inside-out just because your band made it? Wrong. Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic found this out the hard way when he couldn't quite get it right on Harmonix's and MTV Games' Rock Band 2 (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii), playing their song "In Bloom".

Anyone know what the word pompatus means? No? Well, doesn't matter, The Joker's still one of the best Steve Miller songs out there. Harmonix is coming out with a new batch of DLC content for Rock Band next week, featuring songs from the Steve Miller Band, Godsmack, and more. Details after the link.

No, seriously, what does pompatus mean?

So you they think are way too much music games now, huh? Well in the opinion of Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos, that may not exactly be bad thing. In fact, it actually can be the key to motivate people to trying out real music, saying that it gives people "a taste of what lies on the other side."

After releasing the first two Rock Band (Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii) games in two consecutive years, Harmonix is apparently skipping 2009 for the next entry in the popular rhythm game series. For this year, they're bringing most of their creative forces to bear on the upcoming Beatles game. Rock Band fans won't be left without new tracks to play, though. More after the jump.

And yet even more (online) publications are rolling out their "best of 2008" lists. Following the rather compromising list from Time Magazine comes another one from Seattle Times. Though the list seems questionable of their credibility in video games evaluation (well, everyone's entitled to their own opinion, right?), the awards they've given out are still well-deserved of the games they've listed.