Harmonix has officially revealed the existence of Rock Band 4, which will be launching on PS4 and Xbox One some time this year. The news comes after many rumors and a lot of speculation due to various actions on the part of Harmonix. Music games of this type had many years of popularity before suddenly crashing due to oversaturation in the market. This will be the first new entry in the series since 2010’s Rock Band 3.
The official details so far state “Rock Band 4 brings the critically-acclaimed franchise to a new generation of consoles, focusing on the features and gameplay that people love, and expanding the franchise in innovative ways that were informed by how fans play and what they want.”
Speaking of the upcoming sequel, Harmonix CEO Steve Janiak said “With Rock Band 4, we’re doubling down on the energy and excitement of playing music live with your friends. Focusing on the core experience that our fans have told us they love allows us to evolve established gameplay in meaningful ways that we can’t wait to share with everyone later this year.
The instruments for the game will be created by Mad Catz, whose President and CEO Darren Richardson said “We couldn’t be happier to be working with Harmonix and help bring the band back together for the launch of Rock Band 4. Harmonix possesses unrivaled passion and vision for music gaming and we can’t wait to introduce the next generation music platform to passionate gamers.”
Following the series’ tradition, Rock Band 4 will support not only the new songs on the disc, but also over 2000 songs that were previously made available as DLC. However, Harmonix is currently unsure about cross-platform DLC transfer. So, if you bought all of your tracks on Xbox Live, you might want to consider getting the Xbox One version of Rock Band 4, and vice-versa. Owners of Rock Band 3 can celebrate the announcement by downloading the free song “I Still Believe” by Frank Turner.
Something else that Harmonix is currently unsure about is whether or not old hardware will function with Rock Band 4. Fans of the music genre likely have piles of old plastic intruments laying around that they would like to reuse, instead of buying all new instruments. Harmonix said “We’re already working closely with Mad Catz, Sony, and Microsoft on solutions for letting you use legacy hardware on new consoles. This is a challenge on both the software side and hardware side, but something we’d love to happen. We’ll have more information on this in the coming months.”
