Rock Band Unplugged Dated/Detailed News

The first Rock Band game for Sony's PSP, Rock Band Unplugged, will release in North America and Europe from June 9th and will retail in the UK at £24.99, EA and MTV Games have announced this afternoon.

The game, which is being developed by Harmonix in partnership with Backbone Entertainment, will feature the first in-game store for downloadable content on Sony's PSP, which will be powered by the PlayStation Network and is also accessible via PC.

Some timed exclusive tracks for the game (as listed below) have also been announced. These will be released on the PSP game first and then will become available for all Rock Band users in downloadable track packs at a later date.

• 3 Doors Down - "Kryptonite"
• AFI - "Miss Murder"
• Alice in Chains - "Would?"
• Audioslave - "Gasoline"
• Black Tide - "Show Me the Way"
• Blink 182 - "What's My Age Again"
• Freezepop - "Less Talk More Rokk"
• Jackson 5 - "ABC"
• Tenacious D - "Rock Your Socks"

The rest of the 40+ master recordings in the game will be drawn from Rock Band's back-catalogue of downloadable tracks on its music store.

"Rock Band Unplugged reinvents band gameplay while staying true to the authentic feel of the Rock Band console games," said Bob Picunko, Senior Vice-President of Electronic Games for MTV Games. "Harmonix delivers innovation with every game they develop and we are excited to continue our long-list of industry firsts with the Rock Band in-game wireless music store on the PSP system."

For those of you wondering why Harmonix and MTV Games have opted for the Unplugged moniker when there are no 'Unplugged' tracks in the game, it's because there are no peripherals for this PSP version of Rock Band.

Gamers will be able to play on the drums, bass, lead guitar, or vocals in the game, but will only interact via the PSP's standard control scheme (i.e. face buttons, d-pad, and shoulder buttons). With this in mind, we're a little confused about how you'll play on vocals, but whatever.