Rock Band action figures on the way

There's an announcement on the Rock Band forums about a big site update coming next week. Among many cool features is the one I've been eagerly awaiting (no, not the availability of Crowded House tracks, though now that you mention it...). I'm talking about those $75 action figure versions of your Rock Band character!

BANDMATE CREATOR

As if that weren’t enough, in addition to posters, shirts, and stickers, you can make customized 3D statues of your favorite Rock Band 2 characters, which we’ve dubbed “Bandmates”. These things are awesome. They’re about 6” tall, made using full-color 3D printing technology from Z Corporation. Just pick a character, an instrument, and a pose, and they’ll get shipped to your door for about 70 bucks. The Harmonix office is swarming with Bandmate prototypes. After we'd evaluated a test run, we’d give them away to employees, and there was always a mad scramble to grab them on giveaway day.

I may get a t-shirt too...I've been wondering when the online integration piece of this that was obviously required would fall into place. This sounds like it. Which I am pretty sure means that they're tying in the XBox live database and your account information to an account on rockband.com somehow, maybe your forum account even. Lots of possibilities there once they do.

They also mention picture functionality to take pictures of your band and make them available online, which is awesome news. I literally tried last night to take a picture of T-Cat to post here with a digital camera, but the batteries were low. It seems they knew what I was up to, and felt that T-Cat deserved better.