Rock Band 4

[Keth]

Rock Band 4 announced

 

Your songs are safe

Staying current with Rock Band was a potentially costly endeavor. Over the course of the series, thousands of tracks hit the marketplace. With each one costing a buck or two, you can see how building up a library of songs could add up. Even though the series is making a technological leap, longtime fans don’t have to worry about facing a double-dipping situation.

“We’re putting a lot of effort into rebuilding that DLC library on the current-gen consoles, and that’s a pretty big initiative in and of itself,” Sussman says. “It took us five-plus years to accumulate a library that has thousands of songs in it. It’s a time-consuming process for us and the first parties; lucky for us we have great relationships there and they understand the value of that library in the context of Rock Band. If you bought songs in Rock Band 3 or Rock Band 2 or Rock Band 1, songs that you bought will carry forward to Rock Band 4. There are a lot of folks out there who have spent some significant scratch on the DLC catalog and the last thing we want to do is come back to those players and say, ‘OK, you have to buy those songs again.’ We’ll support entitlements, we’ll have the full library out.”

 

…And so are your instruments (fingers crossed)

The second big question players are likely to ask is whether they’ll have to buy new instruments, or if the ones from last-gen will work. “We’re working with Sony and Microsoft to make that possible, and I have to hedge a little bit because the keys to that kingdom really are held by the first parties,” Sussman says. “We’re dealing with a lot of hardware technology that has changed over the generational gap, and the security protocols and the chips in play are different on 360 and Xbox One, and to some lesser extent, between the PS3 and the PS4. But there’s still policy and some challenging technology that we’re working through. But those conversations are going very well, and I’m confident that we will have a solution, but because we don’t have it today that’s kind of the most concrete statement that I can make about it.”

 

Keyboards are out

You may have noticed that Mad Catz is making guitar and drum peripherals, with no mention of the keyboard, which was introduced with Rock Band 3. “We’re focusing on the core band. There’s a lot of back-to-roots Rock Band 1,” Sussman says. “From a hardware perspective, we really want to rally around the classic configuration of guitar, bass, vocals, and drums, and double down on a feature set that will appeal to that player – because that’s where the action is. Those are the peripherals that most people have.”

Edited March 6, 2015 by Axels

[Jables]

*sadly plays keytar*

 

Just like every other 80's icon I imagine. It shits me that suddenly back-compating peripherals is suddenly an option. Whoever brokered the deal with Cthulu to resurrect the franchise was smart.

[Keth]

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