Following the release of various hints, Harmonix has confirmed that the critically acclaimed Rock Band series will be making its début on current gen consoles later this year.
This long-awaited reiteration of the series will be available on both Xbox One and PS4. However, despite its current gen migration those who have previously purchased instruments associated with the game will be able to use them throughout their play-throughs.
As well as the ability to use previously purchased items, this reiteration will also allow backwards compatibility for DLC.
Alongside returning features, Rock Band’s current generation game will posses various new and unique instruments, as well as new controllers that vastly capitalise on the success of their predecessors.
“The landscape has changed a lot with respect to what a developer can do. It’s the logistical stuff – title updates are easier than they were in the last generation,”
said product manager Daniel Sussman.
“We feel very strongly that making Rock Band 4 should be fun for us, and we had to think a lot about what’s the game we would want to work on and that we would want to play. And where we arrived is that we want to build on and evolve the Rock Band experience that people love.”
“There’s a lot of platform-level work that frankly is our priority right now… This is the way that a lot of people interact with music and get to know new music, and we’re thinking about elements of the experience that feed into that – the DLC library, the simulation at its core. Rock Band is so much about guitar, drums, bass and vocals and that social play experience.”
However considering the game is in early development it will not be showcased in the near future, Sussman has profusely reassured fans that this long awaited reboot will no be a revamped version of a previous title in the series.
“On the one hand we don’t want to tinker with a core mechanic that has been very successful, on the other hand we want to push the envelope with regards to what people expect.
We have a lot of really cool things up our sleeves, things that we’re excited to show in the E3 time frame.”
