McCartney initially thought Harmonix demo looked like a "really bad band"

The Beatles: Rock Band may now be a top review-grabbing, sure-to-be-successful super-game, but Paul McCartney's initial thoughts on Harmonix's pitch weren't exactly complimentary.

From this Guardian piece:

There were "a couple of grown-ups standing looking very foolish with these little plastic guitars playing to a screen", he says. "And we're going, 'Yeah, all right… It just looks like a really bad band.' They said: 'We really can do a great one with the Beatles, and we'll show you.' So Ringo and I got a bit intrigued. They said: 'Look, the thing is, if we get it right, these things are very, very popular.' And we go, 'Yeah, well, we know, because our kids and the young people we know do it.'"

McCartney's scepticism gently lifted. "The scepticism is in order not to make a terrible mistake," he explained. "We go, 'no, no,' and we're really down on it, and they've really got to prove themselves. We won't go, 'Oh, that's nice… go on boys, you just do it.' We guard the flame a bit. But then they did come back one day and they had something. They were playing our songs, they had some visuals that were half-working, and the penny dropped. We went, 'You know what? This could be pretty cool.'"

And the rest is history. Good history, "the Shareholders" hope.