Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman has recently stated that sales for The Beatles: Rock Band have been surpassing the company’s expectations. “In the first week we’ve sold about 25% of our inventory, and we’ve had tremendous excitement around this game,” says Dauman. “The reviews have been incredible… It really is a work of art.”

Furthermore, gamers seem to have an insatiable appetite not only for The Beatles, but also for plastic musical instruments - the special edition of the new Rock Band, which comes packaged with The Beatles-branded guitars and drum sets, is also selling very well. Quoth Dauman, “The special limited edition set that we have priced at $249 … is selling really fast, and it looks like we’ll be selling out of that in November.”

The game’s impressive sales coupled with widespread media exposure, ranging from magazine cover stories to features on late night talk shows, make EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich think that MTV Games will begin to develop games outside of the music genre in the wake of The Beatles: Rock Band.