I hit 800 “performances” in Guitar Hero 3 last night, if the guitarhero.com stats are accurate, which I think is pretty reasonable over four months (or perhaps more accurately “mental”, according to Mentat in IRC). As a result I’m getting a bit tried of the GH3 songs, but not to worry! Exciting plastic-instrument-related news about the European release of Rock Band (available in the US since the early 16th century) finally arrived!

The good news is Rock Band is coming to the UK, for a while it seemed like they were just going to flick V-signs across the Atlantic while rocking out over there. The bad, if not entirely surprising, news is the only confirmed date is for the XBox 360 version (May 23rd), with PlayStation 2 and 3 versions in “the summer”, and the Wii version “when the still sea conspires an armour and her sullen and aborted currents breed tiny monsters”, according to spokesperson Geoff Madeupquotes.

On the plus side, rather than the naff plastic instruments in the US bundle, the UK will be getting titanium drum kits, solid silver guitars with inlaid emeralds and diamond microphones with strontium edging. Either that or we’re going to get stiffed on the price, with it being £130 for the instruments and £50 for the game, so £180 for the lot compared to the US bundle price of $170.

Hrm. I was already wavering over the Wii version, lacking DLC as it does. At £130 I doubt I’ll bother with the instruments; I would’ve picked up the game alone, just for another 50+ songs to guitar along to, but with Neversoft and Harmonix (or more likely Activision and EA) getting stroppy with each other it doesn’t look like a Wii Guitar Hero controller will work with Rock Band, so… bah.

To get a rock fix until Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is released, I’ll have another crack at getting the Wii guitar going with Frets on Fire. I sort-of more-or-less had it running, but the bluetooth stack seemed a bit flaky (least, that’s my excuse for only hitting half the notes), I’ll give it a bit more of a poke.