Rhythm games have been run into the ground, with multiple releases in multiple franchises choking retail shelves with plastic guitars and marked-down prices. Rock Band 3 has a hard road ahead of it, with the Guitar Hero series having already released DJ Hero 2 to good reviews, and more hardware being sold to gamers in order to take advantage of the “Pro” experience. Rock Band 3 is coming into a busy market with an expensive product in a crowded genre.

While it’s easy to be skeptical, all that falls away when you plug in the new keyboard attachment, a microphone with a stand, and play John Lennon’s “Imagine” while playing the piano line. Rock Band 3 needs to deliver a new experience in order to justify itself, and that’s what we were looking for when we took our first look at the keyboard peripheral and game in the privacy of our office. Luckily, we found it.

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Channeling the Piano Man: a preview of the Rock Band 3 keyboard