The Beatles are finally releasing their music digitally, after a lengthy battle marked by rancor, false starts, gnashing of teeth, and bickering ... wait, what's that? The Fab Four's catalog will not be available for download? It'll be on ... Rock Band? A video game? Sure, there are already CDs with digital Beatles songs, but we were hoping for more than this.

That's right. MTV Games and Harmonix have somehow convinced the Beatles' music company, Apple Corps, Inc., to pony up the rights to an unnamed number of Beatles songs to be used on Rock Band, and will also debut new hardware "modeled after" those instruments the Beatles played. So will there be Vox amps like you see in the Abbey Road studios in the pic above? Paul's Hofner bass, George's Gretsch guitar, or John's Rickenbacker? We'll have to wait until 9/9/09 (will the time of day be One After 9:09?) to find out.

Whenever — it's a sorry state of affairs when the only way to legally get digital files of Beatles tunes is in a silly pretend-musician pantomime/karaoke game. Roll over, John Lennon.

UPDATE: Pricing, after the jump:

* The Beatles: Rock Band Software - Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, Wii: $59.99 MSRP
* The Beatles: Rock Band Standalone Guitars - Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, Wii: $99.99 MSRP
* The Beatles: Rock Band Limited Edition Premium Bundle: Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, Wii: $249.99 MSRP

Beatles Rock Band, via Engadget