Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Beatles: Rock Band was developed by Harmonix, published by MTV Games, and distributed by Electronic Arts. It was released internationally on the 9th of September 2009, for PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360.
Dhani Harrison, son of George Harrison, introduced the concept to Apple Corps and its shareholders, including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, and Olivia Harrison, after a chance meeting with MTV president Van Toffler at a 2006 holiday luncheon. Harmonix built a five-song demo finished in February 2008, which was used to gain formal approval from the shareholders as creative partners.
The disc contains 45 Beatles songs drawn from 12 albums recorded during the band's 1963-1970 tenure with EMI Records, plus six non-album singles and the mashup track "Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" from the 2006 Love album.
Giles Martin, son of Beatles producer George Martin, worked at Abbey Road Studio 52 with engineer Paul Hicks to extract individual instrument audio from the original master recordings using audio forensics software and digital frequency filters. The process reportedly took months to complete.
Viacom's agreement with the Beatles' property owners included royalties with a guaranteed minimum of $10 million, rising to as much as $40 million based on initial sales projections. Sony/ATV Music Publishing chairman Martin Bandier described the amount as "not even comparable to anything that has been done before".
The game sold 595,000 units in the United States during September 2009 and more than 3 million copies worldwide by December 2009. Industry analysts had projected larger sales volumes and attributed the shortfall to waning interest in the rhythm game genre and the slow recovery of the video game market from the late-2000s recession.