Harmonix has confirmed that Rock Band 2 is coming. It's coming relatively soon, too. Well, it is if you're based in Americashire and own an Xbox 360. The game will come out in September on Microsoft's console and on “other platforms” later this year.

If you already spent oodles of cash on downloadable content for Rock Band, worry not. Speaking in an interview, the game's lead designer, Dan Teasdale, explained, “As far as Harmonix is concerned, there's no difference between 'Rock Band 1 DLC' and 'Rock Band 2 DLC' – we're just releasing awesome songs every week onto the Rock Band platform, all of which are playable by the Rock Band titles that support DLC."

You won't have to fork out truckloads of cash on new instruments, either. Instruments from the original game will be compatible with Rock Band 2. That said, Harmonix reckons it has upped the ante with fresh instruments for the sequel. “... we've been able to take all of the feedback we've received to make quieter, more realistic, and more reliable instruments. We've also added some features for players to customize the experience that they want to have, but we'll be talking more about this soon”, said Teasdale.

On a similar note, Teasdale said, “One of our new ways of experiencing your music library has something targeted explicitly towards players that want to sing and play guitar.”

Nothing has been said of what tracks will feature in the new game just yet, although Harmonix has confirmed that they will all be master recordings.

So, why lead with an Xbox 360 release? "Microsoft has been a great partner throughout the launch of Rock Band in the last year and their continued support is instrumental in supporting the more advanced features and cross title compatibility we will have in Rock Band 2. Of course, our goal is to make Rock Band 2 accessible to all and we look forward to bringing Rock Band 2 to all relevant platforms later this year."

While Rock Band was released simultaneously on the Xbox 360 and PS3 in the US, it is currently only available on the 360 over here.

Of the first game and its DLC, Dan Teasdale says, “We've completely blown past our last announced milestone of 12 million songs sold and are now at 15 million paid downloads. We have an amazing music store integrated into the game, we've been outselling 'real' music retailers like iTunes for some artists, and most importantly, we're releasing more and more new content every week.”

It's not too long since Activision dished up details on Guitar Hero World Tour. You can read all about it here.

^{Source: IGN}