There’s been a lot of Rock Band 2 news, probably because the game is a bit closer to launch. A quick check of current release dates shows the following on Amazon:

The game alone is $60 whereas the “special edition” includes drums, guitar, microphone, and the game for $190. Ten bucks less if you buy the Wii or PS2 versions. Although the “special edition” will not be available on September 14th, oddly enough, the Standalone Rock Band 2 Drums and Standalone Rock Band 2 Guitar will.

The Guitar Hero World Tour release schedule is considerably simpler:

I checked on EBGames / GameStop website and it confirms these dates to the exact day.

So if you have an Xbox 360 (and platform allegiances aside, for rhythm games there is no contest — the Xbox is the best choice due to controller compatibility and DLC experience), you’ll be playing Rock Band 2 before anyone else, and over a month before you can play Guitar Hero World Tour regardless of platform.

To me, Rock Band 2 is by far the superior overall game — so I’m anxious to get it as soon as possible. One caveat: it is unknown (and currently unlikely) that the Wii version of Rock Band 2 will support DLC, whereas GHWT has confirmed DLC support for the Wii. So if your only console is a Wii, you should prefer GHWT at this point.

That’s not to say that GHWT doesn’t have charms of its own. Check out this video Joystiq captured of the development team kicking out Van Halen’s Hot For Teacher at E3.

As a genre addict, I’ll definitely be buying both games.