Rock Band Returns in Rock Band 4

The king returns.

The days when Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and their clones were the kings of the gaming world are a distant memory now, but indeed, there was a time when the majority of console owners had plastic instruments leaning up the wall, and our greatest heroes were those who could triumph over “Through the Fire and the Flames” on the highest difficulty. It seemed like those days would last forever… but then something happened (Maybe it was a lack of interest, maybe a lack of innovation, maybe they ran out of 80’s songs) and the fad died… and those plastic instruments, once the centerpiece of our social lives, collect dust and cobwebs in the shadows…

...but you’ll want to dig them out cuz apparently Rock Band 4, which was just announced today, will be backwards compatible with them and you don’t want to have to spend another fifty on a plastic drum set.

Yes, Rock Band 4, for the PS4 and Xbox One, is coming to us at long last from Harmonix and Mad Catz, of all things, and by the sounds of things, this is no mere Sequel in a row of games; it promises to be the definitive Rock Band game for years to come. Not only will the instruments be backwards compatible (or at least, they should be—it will depend on cooperation with Sony and Xbox), but the hope is that all the DLC you’ve purchased for previous Rock Band games will be as well, meaning you don’t have to purchase them again or, worse still, switch disks and consoles to access your favorites. Harmonix also intends for this game to last for “years”, and instead of releasing new Rock Bands over the next few years, they’ll merely add new content to Rock Band 4.

They’ve also told us that they will be making new instruments, if you don’t have any working old ones yet, and there will be ‘exclusive colors’ available to anyone who pre-orders them. Otherwise, the instruments will be put together by the same people who made the originals, so functionally and visually they should be largely identical.

So, that’s pretty neat. They’re not ready to show us the game yet, (despite the apparent imminent release) but they say we can expect more around E3, so we can look forward to that.

Honestly, I think this is awesome news for console gamers. If there was ever a type of games that are just straight-up better on consoles than PC,it would be Rock Band—finally taking something back from the PC master race! Ha!