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Rock Band 4 Full Details For PS4 & Xbox One!

561 views · Published 5 March 2015 · 2:56 · Indexed 27 September 2026

Channel: Rock N' Roll True Stories · 2015 · Music

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The third focus is on the narrative progression of the game, the story that takes you through your career as a virtual rock star.

Those three aspects of the game will be the focus of Rock Band 4.

Your downloaded songs will work through console families, so PlayStation 3 content will work on PS4, and the same with the Microsoft consoles. Now it's a matter of making sure the library works in the new game, while also figuring out the licensing for the existing content.

Harmonix is dealing with not only DLC, but also songs you bought in a previous game that could be used in later games and will now be used in the latest game on a new platform. This is another area where they're working with first parties, but have many issues they have to solve themselves. This sort of thing is a unique challenge, and one that doesn't have many existing best practices.

"The work is going really well. I'm confident that we'll get there. Players who have a good-sized library of DLC, it will show up day one and they'll have their songs," Sussman said.

Harmonix can't talk about specific terms of these deals, but Sussman described it as a "rolling set of licenses," some of which are easier to renew than others. He estimated that over 95 percent of Rock Band's library of songs will make it over into Rock Band 4.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR EXISTING INSTRUMENTS?
Accessory manufacturer Mad Catz will be creating new instruments for the game, so you can look forward to purchasing new guitars and drums if you'd like. But there is also work being done to make sure your existing instruments are backward-compatible. Harmonix says it's working "aggressively" with Sony and Microsoft to make that happen.

"The Sony instruments were wireless via a USB dongle; that's pretty straightforward. Things are complicated on the Xbox side, and I'm not prepared to talk specifics yet until I understand them a little better, frankly. There's a first-party component, and a technical component being managed by Harmonix and Mad Catz that is still very much in play," Sussman told Polygon.

"Harmonix are working tirelessly to ensure that gamers can make use of legacy music and DLC that they purchased last time around and so [too], we are doing all we can to try and make last-gen hardware compatible with Rock Band 4," said Alex Verrey, global public relations and communications director for Mad Catz.

"The current generation of console hardware, however, is dramatically different from last gen — presenting a new set of compatibility challenges," Verrey continued. "Rest assured, however, that we hear the message loud and clear and we're on the side of the gaming community. It's an ongoing effort and we'll do everything in our power to try and ensure compatibility wherever possible."

So it's very likely that the instruments in your garage or basement will work on the current-generation systems, but exactly how that will work, or if there will be any limitations to that compatibility, are still up in the air.

It's a hard situation for a developer or publisher to be in, because so much of the work depends on what Sony and Microsoft will do themselves, or will allow to be done with their respective systems. Sussman dismissed claims anyone was being hard to work with, however.

"Nobody is going out of their way to make this difficult. We're dealing with cutting-edge technology; it's all kind of emerging," Sussman said. "It's just really complicated."

Update: Harmonix has confirmed the keyboard will not be returning in Rock Band 4.

"Rock Band 4 will focus on the core experience and the roots of the franchise — guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. There will be no Pro Guitar or key support in Rock Band 4. We will continue to support "Pro" mode for Drums," the company said in a statement.

WHAT ABOUT THE NEW HARDWARE?
"We'll be discussing the hardware in much more detail as we approach launch but at both Harmonix and Mad Catz there was a mutual desire to strip the experience back down to the core: What made Rock Band so much fun to begin with?" Mad Catz's Verrey said.

"The emphasis was therefore shifted to creating the worlds' [most] fun and inclusive party-based music experience, so we're not pushing forward with complex pro-instruments or anything which we feel will alienate fans who just want to kick back and have some fun," said Verrey. "We want to do something new, we want to [be] innovative and prove interesting, but at the same time, we don't want to reinvent the wheel and drastically alter the Rock Band experience."

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