Rock Band is a series of music video games developed by Harmonix Music Systems and MTV Games, and distributed by Electronic Arts for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Wii, and PSP game systems. The series, inspired by Harmonix's previous efforts on the Guitar Hero series, allows up to four players to simulate the performance of popular rock music songs by playing with controllers modeled after musical instruments. Players can play the lead guitar, bass guitar, and drums parts to songs with "instrument controllers", as well as sing through a USB microphone.

Players are scored on their ability to match scrolling musical "notes" while playing instruments, or by their ability to match the singer's pitch on vocals. The first game in the series, Rock Band, was released in 2007 shortly after Harmonix was acquired by MTV Games, and its sequel Rock Band 2 was released in 2008. Harmonix has also regularly provided downloadable content, in the form of additional downloadable songs on a weekly basis through the game consoles' network services.

To date, over 800 songs are available between those on the game discs and through downloadable content. Harmonix has also created standalone Track Packs that either contain a selection of downloadable content, or a selection of band-specific songs. The company has also designed the "Rock Band Network" to allow bands and labels to publish their songs as Rock Band tracks that can be purchased by players.

To date, over 13 million copies of Rock Band titles have been sold with more than $1 billion in total sales, and over 50 million songs have been downloaded. Harmonix Music Systems previously developed several music-based games, including Frequency, Amplitude, and the Karaoke Revolution series. Harmonix was approached by RedOctane to help develop Guitar Hero, a music video game similar to Konami's GuitarFreaks in that a special guitar-shaped controller was used to mimic the playing of lead guitar to several rock tracks.

Guitar Hero proved to be a surprise success, and led to the development of a full sequel, Guitar Hero II, and an expansion title, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s.

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