Yes! I'm familiar with about 20 of those songs. RHCP, Pumpkins, Soundgarden, RATM, Alice in Chains. This is going to be sweet. I will definitely be buying this game. This set list is amazing.

And you can get all the original RB tracks as downloadable content for <$5. Sweet. I'm buying RB2.

I'm not clear on the RB1 content in RB2. Can someone quote some official statement?

Are we getting all the songs on the RB1 disc? Or are we only getting the RB1 DLC (that we've already bought) for RB2?

And all of this is free?

Yeah think I will pick up the game at least. Doubt I will shell out the cash for another set of the same plastic instruments since no improvements. I just got a new drum kit, other than a basspedal is all I really need. I prefer the guitar hero guitar over the pos rockband one.

I was interested in the gh4 drum set, looks so much more fun than RockBand's drum, but as of now.. the song list is >> GH4, we shall see once they release the full set.

Steve Miller Band can keep on rocking me baby! woot

Well I'm definitely leaning towards Rock Band 2 now...nice bit of information there.

New drum kit for RB2 and RB1:

https://www.drumrocker.com/

500+ songs by the end of the year... wow!

Insinuating Chaos definitely needs to invest in one of those drum sets. :)
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"Don't blow this, Gene!"

Let There Be Rock is a hella cool AC/DC track. Battery is about as good as old school Metallica gets. RATM, Linkin Park, Motorhead, and Disturbed are also selling points for me. Great setlist.

Yeah, RATM's "Testify" is one of my favorite songs ever.

"All the content will be backwards-compatible with all previous Rock Band DLC to date. It was also announced that "almost" all songs from the previous Rock Band disc can be transferred over." - Kotaku

• After 14 years since Guns N’ Roses last official music release, Axl Rose selects Rock Band 2 to debut official new track “Shackler's Revenge” from the highly-anticipated album Chinese Democracy.

• Rock Band 2 is the first and only video game to feature the music of AC/DC. It includes their epic rock anthem, "Let There Be Rock.”

• For the first time ever, music from American music icon, Bob Dylan, is featured in a video game with “Tangled Up In Blue.”

• Rock Band 2 will feature backwards compatibility with all Rock Band downloadable music content released to date.

• Owners of the original Rock Band will have the ability to export most of the Rock Band disc tracks and upgrade them into Rock Band 2 gameplay-the first time ever in videogame history! [1]

• With ongoing weekly DLC releases including individual tracks, track packs and full albums, the Rock Band music library will feature more than 500 songs by year’s end!

Why can't RB2 have the create your own music like GH4, that looks to be a ton of fun. That new drum set looks sweet, but $300 bucks........ wtf

I'm skeptical of the "create your own music" feature. It can work with the drums, but you just can't make 5-10 buttons on a guitar reproduce the many sounds a guitar makes. At least, if they do, I want to see how.

I wonder how the slide Guitar is going to work.

Hey, a lot of rock bands sold a lot of albums by playing the same 3 chords over and over...

I had an idea to make an open source Rock Band that runs on a computer. A community would have to be developed. That community would lay down the notes for popular songs and those "transcriptions" would be distributed from a server via XML.

Then, you'd hook your Rock Band instruments to your computer and open up Winamp, WMP, or iTunes. You'll launch the Rock Band plugin and setup a playlist. Then, you'll start the playlist and begin playing your instruments while the plugin pulls the XML files from a server.

So, people would be able to play any song they wanted in Rock Band as long as someone wrote the notes from it.

Perhaps this could also work with an XBOX 360 XNA app and a Zune or music stored on the hdd.

"There are plans to release an additional 20 tracks as free downloadable content after the game's release."

"According to the release, "owners of the original Rock Band will have the ability to export most of the Rock Band disc tracks and upgrade them into Rock Band 2 gameplay-the first time ever in videogame history!" A fee is required to unlock the content, which will be "under 5 dollars" according to the release."

The extra 20 tracks are, I'm assuming, going to come from Harmonix's employee's bands. The employees are musicians first, game designers second, and their bonus tracks are always fun to play.