Do you remember Rock Band? Hours upon hours were probably spent in the basements of your parents home rocking out with your best friends. Nowadays Rock Band seems like a thing of the past. While Rock Band had some great success in its time, the series lost steam and hasn’t recovered since RockBand 3 was released in 2011. however, there seems to be a glimmer of hope for us wannabe Rockstars!
This week Harmonix, Rock Band’s developer, announced its plans to release Rock Band 4 later this year forXbox One and PlayStation 4. While this is exciting news for Rock Band enthusiasts, Harmonix’s plans for Rock Band 4 are a little different from past games. According to an interview with IGN, Project Manager Daniel Sussman states:
There are a lot of things that I think we can do, both on the publishing side and the development side, to sustain Rock Band 4 as a product. Rock Band 4 is a sequel relative to Rock Band 3 and that 4 is really an indication of our commitment to innovation in this space and the idea that this is a bona fide evolutionary step from Rock Band 3 in a lot of ways. It does not imply that there will be a Rock Band 5, 6, 7, and 8.
We think that there’s an opportunity this time around, given the technology to interact directly with our audience and also to react to the feedback that we get directly from our audience to sort of expand upon a core game of Rock Band 4. So Rock Band 4 will expand through title updates, through content updates, over the long span. We view Rock Band 4 as the Rock Band for this console generation, and it will continually evolve through a dialogue with our community. I think Rock Band is a great title to utilize that approach in the console space.
From this statement it appears that instead of creating a ‘new’ Rock Band annually, the plan is to simply update Rock Band 4 with more songs and features. While this seems like a great idea, this likely means ongoing DLC (Downloadable Content) that will likely come at a cost. But hey, paid for content is better than no content at all.
To get you pumped up for the new Rock Band, check out the video below.
Can you feel your Thunderstruck fingers getting ready for action. Of course you can! With that said, what are your thoughts? Is the resurrection of Rock Band a good decision? Will Rock Band regain its once incredible popularity? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.