Today, Harmonix officially announced that their guitar/drums/bass/vocals rhythm-game franchise Rock Band will be seeing its fourth iteration later this year.
Coming out on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, Rock Band 4 will bring back the rhythm-gaming giant to gamers, a full five years after Rock Band 3 was released into the world. Along with it come a bunch of features that fans of the series are going to love, probably.
Chief among these is the fact that you’ll hopefully be able to use your old Rock Band peripherals with Rock Band 4. Still got that plastic Fender Stratocaster from the original Rock Band? Well you can use it again. What about those old drums? Same again, all will work thanks to the USB interface. This is still up in the air as they’ve got to fully work out how to get the legacy peripherals to work on new consoles and with Rock Band 4, but it’s definitely an aim of Harmonix.
More good news for stuff you bought before, all DLC purchased from the store or exported from a disc will transfer from old generation consoles to the new ones at no additional cost. Of course they’ll have to actually make the content available first but they are pretty adamant about this fact. The only possible downside here comes in bringing DLC cross platform. If you had a bundle of songs on PlayStation 3 and you want to bring them to PlayStation 4, that’ll be fine. Bring them from a PlayStation 3 to Xbox One though and you’ll find that… well you’ll find it straight up doesn’t work.
There’s no word on new instruments yet as Harmonix are focusing on the four pre-existing musical melody makers (guitar, drums, vocals, and bass) but let’s just hope. Never say never. There’s also no word yet on a PC version.
Peripheral company Mad Catz are even entering into a partnership with Harmonix to create special peripherals for use with Rock Band 4. People who attend PAX East will be able to pre-order a guitar exclusive to the event from the Harmonix booth.
These details and more all came from an FAQ on the Harmonix site which you are more than welcome to delve into for answers to any other questions you may have.
Have rhythm games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero been filed away in your life now never to return? Do you still play Rock Band or have you moved into Ubisoft’s Rocksmith? Let us know in the comments box below
