Hey gang!
This is Eric Pope from Harmonix. All of us at the studio are beyond thrilled to announce today that Rock Band will make its triumphant return to living rooms this year with Rock Band 4 for PlayStation 4!
I’ve spent years as a community manager playing our various installments of Rock Band around the world with fans at every event you can imagine. I’m as excited as you are to have the next evolution of the franchise, Rock Band 4, on the current generation of console hardware.
Since we released Rock Band 3 in 2010, Harmonix has branched out, developing projects in a number of new areas including motion control, PC and even VR. With every new project, the studio has challenged the perception of what a “music game” can be, and learned a lot in the process. With those lessons under our belt, we felt like we were prepared to dive back into our beloved Rock Band series, and actually push the genre forward. We’ve landed on a design that doubles down on the core Rock Band experience fans love, while innovating on gameplay in some super exciting ways that we’ll have more to say about a little later this year.
I know what you’re wondering right about now:
“How about all those Rock Band DLC songs I bought on my PlayStation 3?”
That’s a fair question! We’ve always been committed to the idea that Rock Band is a platform, and as such Rock Band 4 will support all your previous DLC purchases at no additional cost! (Be sure to thank our friends at PlayStation, because we couldn’t pull this off without significant work from them!)
Meet the Team
The Rock Band 4 team is comprised of an immensely talented group of veteran game developers. I’m honored and humbled to work with these folks every day. This video piece will give you a chance to meet some of the passionate people behind the game and understand why we think the time is right for Rock Band’s return.
Make no mistake, Rock Band 4 isn’t a simple “next-gen remaster” of an existing game- it’s the next step forward for the series. I can’t wait to rock out with you later this year!
This is great news. :) I absolutely loved playing RB and have great memories of doing it with friends and my loved ones. My old guitars were collecting dust and honestly, I don’t care if I have to buy new ones. One of them was starting to die anyway. It’ll be a good excuse.
While cross console compatability is always a dream, I doubt M$ will ever approve it. It would make switching away from their console to another too easy. Keep up the good work Harmonix and we will give you our money.
Proud PS, PS2, PS3, and PS4 owner
I’m not sure anyone from Harmonix is still reading this, but I’d also like to know if the DLC that was included with Rock Band Blitz! would be importable with this since it was available to use in Rock Band 3.
Also, I would love to see a PS4 version of Blitz!. It’s a really underrated game. I loved almost everything about the PS3 version…ALMOST… What I would like to see changed in a PS4 version is the ability to challenge friends to Blitz challenges without requiring Facebook. I think that really kept a lot of people from really getting into it.
I’m also hoping for legacy Guitar Hero and Rock Band instrument support. Many of us have been holding onto our original instruments hoping Rock Band 4 would come out and support them.
Please don’t cut out the keyboard. I think that was the best new addition to Rock Band and what helped it differentiate itself from the competition. I bought the Mad Katz PS3 keyboard and still use it as a MIDI controller.
hopefully they have what they had in rock band 2 where you had to do the champaign thing to get the endless setlist, I loved doing that, I would absolutly love it if they brought that back
RB4!! Awesome news…. but PLEASE consider adding keyboard support! This added a whole new element to the RB experience and party play. A lot of the great RB tunes have some fantastic keyboard parts… synth, piano, organ, orchestral strings etc… these add a lot to the game and are fun to “play”….. Even, as a last resort, have the keyboard controller able to play the guitar or bass parts… If not a feature, something that could be patched in?? Please… RB and keyboard fan!!!
“STOKED”
I’ve been anxiously awaiting the upcoming release of “Amplitude” (and thrilled that I got to play the pre alpha demo at PAX East this weekend), but this news is just orders of magnitude bigger.
Will we be able to get a downloadable copy of the game instead of physical? And maybe buy peripherals separately? I hate physical media.