Harmonix and MTV Games today announced that Toby Keith will make his Rock Band debut through six tracks on the online music store this week. Keith is one of the major players in the music industry and has sold more than 25 million albums this century.

The six-pack features a compilation of his most popular songs spanning his entire career including his first number-one hit “Should’ve Been a Cowboy”. The other songs are “How Do You Like Me Now”, “Beer For My Horses”, “Who’s Your Daddy”, “I Love This Bar” and “She’s a Hottie”.

Each track will cost $1.99 (160 points), with the six pack going for $9.99 (800 points).

MTV Games and EA today announced that the Rock Band franchise has officially surpassed $1 billion in North American retail sales in 15 months, citing figures by the NPD Group. In addition, over 40 million paid individual songs have been sold via download through the online platform; there are a total of 600 songs available in the catalog.

Rock Band was launched back in November 20, 2007 and has sold millions of units. Its sequel was released earlier last year and built upon the original. The franchise is the first to start full album downloads on PS3 and Xbox 360, which quite a few bands have taken advantage of, including Judas Priest, Foo Fighters, Megadeth and Rush.

Following Guitar Hero III and Guitar Hero Aerosmith, Neversoft’s multi-instrument music game Guitar Hero World Tour will be released on PC and Mac this summer, courtesy of Aspyr.

The computer editions will feature the same content found in the console versions, including all the on-disc songs, music studio mode and support for full band gameplay. However, the studio made no mention of downloadable content.

More details are expected soon.

To honor the re-release of Pearl Jam’s debut album “Ten”, Rock Band, MTV, MTV2, VH1 and VH1 Classic are teaming up to roll out a two-week long lineup of content that celebrates the band, its success and its debut in Rock Band as downloadable content.

Putting aside MTV and VH1’s tributes, gamers will get the “Ten” album – which has sold 12 million copies – as downloadable content in Rock Band and Rock Band 2 on March 24. In addition, Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron will sit down for a Game With Fame session on Friday, March 27 at 7pm ET. Those with a Xbox Live Gold account can go up against him by sending a friend request to “Pearl Jam GWF” and be online half an hour before at 6.30pm ET.

The “Ten” album was released back on August 27, 1991. It reached #2 on the Billboard 200 chart and sold over 12 million copies.

Seven new screenshots from Guitar Hero Metallica have been released, showing off the playable characters and the gameplay.

The game is due out on PS3, PS2, Wii and Xbox 360 soon.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Ray Parker Jr. revealed that he is currently working on getting the original Ghostbusters theme into Rock Band’s library of playable music.

“We were just talking about that, we’re working on it now,” he said. “I think they should have Ghostbusters in Rock Band.”

It would be awesome to play the Ghostbusters tune with a bunch of friends over.

Seeing as how it’s the end of the week, Harmonix, staying true to their tradition, has revealed the next batch of downloadable content for its multi-instrument music games Rock Band and Rock Band 2.

Due out on March 17 and 19 on Xbox 360 and PS3, respectively, is the “Get the Funk Out” track pack that offers three pieces of funk music: Average White Band – "Pick Up the Pieces", Earth Wind & Fire – "Shining Star" and James Brown – "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine – Pt 1".

They will also release the following songs individually: Against Me! – "Thrash Unreal", The New Pornographers – "All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth" and “Use It”, Papa Roach – "Last Resort" and “Lifeline”.

The track pack will cost 440 Microsoft points ($5.50) and individual tracks 160 points ($2).

According to Dhani Harrison, son of The Beatles band member George Harrison, the upcoming Beatles-themed Rock Band game will feature never-before released material from the legendary band. Harrison revealed this in a recent Billboard interview.

"I took the project to Apple and sort of convinced everybody to have a presentation," he said. "We’ve been working on it for the past two years. This is the first one that is going to be totally, historically accurate. It’s been a real headache, but it’s been the most enjoyable work I’ve done in my life."

The Beatles: Rock Band is set for release on September 9 on PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.

Activision, which publishes the popular Guitar Hero series, has filed a trademark for Sing Hero prompting speculation that the company might be preparing a dedicated karaoke game.

This falls in line with Activision’s plans to create “all new differentiated Guitar Hero products” in the second half of 2009. They have also promised a “major re-stage” of the franchise, which added mics and drums in its latest iteration.

It can also be noted that Activision plans to triple the amount of Guitar Hero releases by next year. Three more titles are due out by the end of June, including Guitar Hero: Metallica, Guitar Hero Greatest Hits and Guitar Hero On Tour: Modern Hits.

Marking the addition of awesome metal to Rock Band’s setlist, Harmonix and MTV Games today announced that three new tracks from White Zombie and Turbonegro are headed our way next week.

“More Human than Human” and “Black Sunshine” from White Zombie will be released. This is Rob Zombie’s band before he went solo. In addition, “Wasted Again” from Norwegian punk band Turbonegro will be available too.

To be available starting Tuesday on Xbox Live and Thursday on PlayStation Store, the songs will cost $1.99 (160 Microsoft points) per track.

Activision sends word that legendary lead vocalist and bassist for Motorhead, Lemmy, will be featured as a playable character in Guitar Hero: Metallica this spring.

His in-game likeness will rock and shred his way to the stage alongside Metallica or by himself. The band’s song “Ace of Spades” is featured in the game as a playable track.

The game is due out next month on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and PS2.

Harmonix’s Rock Band franchise saw big sales since its release, and Rock Band 2 sales were solid with 2 million units sold since the game’s September 2008 launch, but that wasn’t enough for Viacom, as the company admitted that the sales were weaker than expected.

The media company attributed the game’s underperformance to a sudden drop in retail spending in the last months of 2008, due to the deepening recession. Despite weak sales, Viacom notes that the series helped increase revenues for its Media Networks segment, which was one of very few positive highlights in Viacom’s earnings call.

The conglomerate said that it plans to focus more on the franchise this year. While there won’t be a numbered sequel, they will release a game featuring music from legendary band The Beatles.

With the release of Guitar Hero Metallica on the horizon, retailers are offering pre-order incentives to those who order the PS3, Xbox 360 or Wii versions of the game.

Those who preorder from GameStop will receive an exclusive second kick pedal for free; GameCrazy customers will get a pair of official drumsticks for free; and Best Buy customers will receive free tattoo sleeves at launch.

Aspiring Wii musicians take note: seven new tracks from progressive rock band Rush is now available on the Rock Band Music Store for the console.

The songs are already available to PS3 and Xbox 360 owners, but come late for Wii owners since the music store is a rather recent addition. The tracks are: “Tom Sawyer”, “Red Barchetta”, “YYZ”, “Limelight”, “The Camera Eye”, “Witch Hunt” and “Vital Signs”.

All tracks are master recordings and cost 200 Wii points per track.

Since Activision is in party mode, the publisher has announced that it will host a Xbox Live weekend this month, letting players 14 years of age or older participate in a number of activities to celebrate Guitar Hero: World Tour.

The activities include an Xbox All NIghter on November 27; Play & Win sweepstakes from November 28 through 30; and Game with Developers on November 30 from 10pm to 1am GMT.

Those who play during the weekend can win special prizes, including Samsung home theater packages, 1GB memory sticks and more. However, most interesting will be the Game with Developers session where lucky gamers can have their ass whooped by the makers of the game themselves. Here are the people who are participating:

• GHDevTina – Producer
• GHDevLee – Associate Producer
• GHDevCorey – Production Coordinator
• GHDevAnthony – Midi Designer
• GHDevChris – Midi Designer
• GHDevJason – Lead Animator
• GHDevZack – Junior Programmer
• GHDevJosh – Jr. Sound Designer
• GHDevKristina – Mocap Supervisor
• GHDevJustin – Mocap Tech
• GHDevAdry – QA Tester
• GHDevBrandon – QA Tester
• GHDevTravisR – QA Tester

You can check out the event’s official website for more information.