For those that missed the confirmation, Harmonix, the original developer of the Guitar Hero series, is bringing back Rock Band. As many fans of both series suspected, Rock Band 4 is finally due out sometime this year for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Five years after the third installment, Harmonix project manager Daniel Sussman explained why it’s the right time to bring the popular music video game back to life:
I tie our game in music into a very concrete way. Say what you will about band games and their rise and fall, but music is still an integral part of world culture, and as long as there’s an interest in music, I feel there’s an opportunity for us to continue to leverage Rock Band as a way of interacting with music.
When we look at where we are with this console cycle, it’s actually in a pretty similar spot to where we were when we released the first Rock Band. And guess what isn’t on the PS4 or Xbox One? Rock Band. And we think it’s a fun enough game that it should.
Rock Band 4 is expected to have well over 3,000 songs available at launch, however, Sussman isn’t ready to confirm any numbers right now because there’s still a lot of work left to do on the development side and also on the first party side:
We’re starting to get songs up and through the Q&A process now. It’s one of those things that I don’t want to say we’ll have a set number for launch, because I don’t want to be wrong, but it is our intent to support the whole catalog.
New instruments such as guitars, drums, and microphones are incoming from Mad Catz again, which is the company responsible for all officially licensed controllers for Rock Band 3.
