We were just getting ready to write a news story about the Green Day: Rock Band demo being up on Xbox Live, but just as we were quitting out of the demo, an interesting image was displayed.
Excuse the image quality, as this was taken with our traditional shaky-cam, but you can at least make out what it is. It's the standard Rock Band instrument logo, with Guitar, Drums, Bass, Microphones, and... oh. A piano, too.
It looks like when Harmonix said they weren't going to be launching any new peripherals, they were telling slight porkies. What else could they be keeping from us? A touchsensitive guitar controller, perhaps? Natal compatibility? Celebrity cameos (we hope not...)?
Considering the number of rock songs that have audible keyboard parts - not to mention how they'll fit it all on screen - we can't help but feel this could be a step in the wrong direction.
We've got faith in Harmonix though, so hopefully they won't shoehorn the keyboards into every song, or we'll be left with Elton John Hero, featuring Keane. We're hoping it'll be used as an expansion to the vocals, so your vocalist can just sing on parts without a keyboard, or tinkle the ivories and sing on parts that do, in a Brandon Flowers style.
It seems almost criminal for them to not include some good Queen now...
For the moment we can only speculate, and only time will tell whether Harmonix manage to pull it off. Now, we're off to play the Green Day: Rock Band demo some more, we suggest you do too.
