Rock Band pricing for Australia announced. Run.

We all knew it was coming and now we can all slap ourselves on the head for dreaming of a better, easier, and less expensive tomorrow. Unfortunately tomorrow has come and Rock Band has a release date… and pricing.

We all knew it was coming and now we can all slap ourselves on the head for dreaming of a better, easier, and less expensive tomorrow.

Unfortunately tomorrow has come and Rock Band has a release date… and pricing. It is, sadly, the pricing that will sting you most of all.

The over-a-year delayed title will finally see a release in Australia, but good luck finding it because most stores here don’t actually want to stock it. This is the original Rock Band, by the way. We don’t have any news on Rock Band 2 so don’t even ask.

In Australia, the now-confirmed pricing will set you back $289.95 for the drum kit, guitar and microphone and $119.95 for the game.

Grreeeaaatttt… so that’s four hundred bucks on top of my four hundred buck-minimum system! Yeah!
Heaven forbid that you want a friend to come in and play the bass, another guitar will set you back $109.95.

Like… wow. Freakin’ wow. Talk about extortion, Harmonix.

Do you like ripping us off? Are you all into that whole currency conversion crap where you take our currency and convert it into a greasy form of dismal depression?

Seriously, the issue I take here is that a few months ago, our dollar was thriving. Now that it’s dropping again, the US to Australian dollar conversion still makes no sense. At today’s 0.87 rate, the package sold in America for $169.99 converts to under two hundred dollars for the kit we’ll be charged $289.95 for.

Yeah. Extortion.

So I guess the question you’ll really want to ask yourself is this:

After a ridiculous delay and a huge price hike, do you really want Rock Band?