We love music games here at Outcyders - whether it's Just Dance, Guitar Hero or Nintendo's quirky Rhythm Paradise, we've played them all. But when it comes to all our time favourite, it has to be Rock Band - a multiplayer-centric music game that lets you form your own virtual band with a group of friends, and strum/sing/drum along to their favourite rock songs, thanks to a handful of plasticy instruments. Some of you may remember how, a few months ago, we stumbled on a little Rock Band survey, asking fans what they'd want from a new entry in a series, which pretty much confirming that Rock Band 4 was in the works - so the confirmation today that it'll be hitting shelves in 2015 is music to our ears (*cough*).
Today, developers Harmonix have confirmed that yes, a new Rock Band is in the works, and will be launching some time this year on the Playstation 4 and Xbox One, with more details, about a whole load of top secret new features, due out in May. Teaming up with gaming peripherals manufacturer Mad Catz once more, it looks like we'll be seeing a new slew of plastic instruments for the new consoles - although, a behind the scenes video does say how they're aware that "its pretty clear that people want to use their existing instruments", so we wouldn't rule out the option to carry your original plastic across yet either.
Here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again - unfortunately, this is literally the only Rock Band 4 picture we have .
There's other interesting tit-bits with regards to backwards compatibility too - most notably concerning Rock Band's humongous library of downloadable songs, which currently stands at a rather impressive 2000+ tunes, spread over more than 500 legendary artists:
"Since the beginning, we've called Rock Band a music platform. Players responded by downloading hundreds of their favorite tracks, and building a massive library of playable music," says Rock Band 4 Product Manager Daniel Sussman. "It's important for us to respect those purchases and enable our fans to bring that content over to the Rock Band platform on new generation consoles."
That means that people who've bought tracks in the past - on the last-generation consoles of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3- will be able to download them onto their new platforms free of charge. The full back catalogue will be coming in stages however, so you likely won't be able to download everything from the off. Quite how this will work, particularly if you're switching from an Xbox 360 to a Playstation 4 (or Playstation 3 to Xbox One, we suppose) remains to be seen, but we imagine more details will be revealed in due time. What's more is that to celebrate the long-awaited announcement, Rock Band fans can download a free Frank Turner song ("I Still Believe") for Rock Band 3 and Rock Band Blitz right now! And it will of course be fully playable on Rock Band 4 when it ships later this year!
"With Rock Band 4, we're doubling down on the energy and excitement of playing music live with your friends," says Harmonix Chief Executive Officer Steve Janiak. "Focusing on the core experience that our fans have told us they love allows us to evolve established gameplay in meaningful ways that we can't wait to share with everyone later this year."
Well, we don't know about you, but we can't wait for May - and then, of course, the likely October/November release date). In the meantime, why not check out the behind the scenes video below for all the latest on Rock Band 4:
