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As a interactive media lawyer, it goes without saying that I am bullish on the future of the games industry. Every year video games get more compelling, more detailed, more fun to play. Meanwhile television and movie producers keep pumping out more of the same.

The rumors going around the web are that Activision and MTV Games have both been in talks with the Beatles‘ representatives regarding a license to create playable tracks based on the Beatles’ catalog. It would say a lot about the market power of the video game industry if Activision or MTV Games were able to score a licensing deal with the Beatles. Every six months or so there are whispers that Apple will finally be adding the Beatles to iTunes, but it hasn’t happened yet.

One aspect of a video game deal involving Beatles content that makes it more likely than a traditional music distribution license is that a Rock Band or Guitar Hero game may only require publishing rights tied to the underlying Beatles compositions and not the recordings themselves.  Use of the recordings would require a license to both the composition and the recording.  A composition only license would require the game developer to re-record the songs, however, which would make the game less compelling than if they used the original recordings. Somehow I doubt Paul and Ringo want to get back in the recording studio to re-record Twist and Shout for Rock Band.  Then again, they might just use covers.

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Excerpt from Joystiq.com’s coverage below:

FT.com revisits the pursuit and reports that, perhaps unsurprisingly, Beatles ‘representatives have held discussions with both Activision and MTV Games’ in pursuit of a ‘final deal [that] would be worth several million dollars’ and ‘could be reached in a matter of weeks.’ Well, we’ll be here in a matter of weeks … say, E3 would be a really nice time to announce something. We’re just sayin’

(Via Joystiq.)