The Rock Band games were a wonderful surprise from the last generation of consoles. Getting together with a group of friends, perhaps a few adult beverages, and slipping into the skin of your favorite rock bands was incredible. I distinctly remember nights where my friends would hand over a few bucks so I would buy some of their favorite songs for everyone to play. I still pull out the now dusty and well worn plastic instruments to play whenever I get the urge. For awhile it seemed that would be the fate of Rock Band and other music games. Faded memories and dusty, plastic instruments.
Bloomberg is reporting “a person familiar with the plan” confirmed a new Rock Band game is currently being developed. This isn’t too big of a surprise since Harmonix, Rock band’s developer, recently restarted their DLC releases for Rock Band 3 and Rock Band Blitz, something they had previously halted altogether. The new stream of DLC hinted at a revival for the touted music franchise but stopped short of any promises of future releases. While the Bloomberg source gives us no additional details about what a current day Rock Band game might look like we can assume there will be some major differences.
Rock Band and games like it saw the plastic instrument become a burden for retailers. There is only so much shelf space and warehouse room your typical Best Buy of Gamestop has. Throw in Rock Band wannabes like Band Hero and Rocksmith and market confusion rises. Could we see a modern Rock Band as a downloadable title that works with any previously owned, instruments? Would DLC be the main source of songs or could we see more on-disc additions? Time will tell but until then, I’ll be setting up my fake drums.
