Following the news yesterday that Harmonix’s crowd-funding campaign to see Rock Band 4 release on PC had failed to meet its $1.5 million target, the studio has released a statement on its fig page explaining the current situation and the future of the project.
Under the banner of ‘The Final Update,’ Harmonix’s statement says exactly what has become obvious from the failure to meet the monetary target – there’s simply not a big enough audience for Rock Band 4 on PC.
We learned exactly what we needed to learn: there doesn’t seem to be enough of an audience to make Rock Band for PC a viable project for us right now. We’re committed to supporting and improving RB4 on consoles. To be clear, we raised nearly $800,000 via backers and investors; it’s an impressive showing of support from our community and for our brand.
But as an independent developer we have to be careful about how much money and development time we risk on a project we’re not sure has a big enough audience, and crowdfunding allowed us to (among other things) judge the market fit for Rock Band PC.
So that’s that, then, right? Not necessarily: Harmonix says that releasing the rhythm action music game on PC in the future is still a possibility, just not right now.
It’s certainly in the realm of possibility that we might try again in the future, or find another path to get Rock Band for PC made. We love the PC as a platform, and we’re excited by the possibilities and freedom it allows for User Generated Content, but right now we don’t have any specific plans to make it happen.
For now though, the developer is, understandably, going to focus on supporting the console versions of Rock Band 4, and closes out the statement by thanking fans of the series for the support they’ve shown the campaign.
Once again, we want to send a huge ‘Thank You’ to everyone who supported us, said they were going to support us, talked about us to their friends, or even just told us what we were doing wrong (seriously). This campaign has been educational and informative for us on many levels, and we look forward to the next challenge with anticipation and joy.
I can’t say I’m particularly surprised that Rock Band 4‘s campaign to get on PC fell short of its goal. Fans that are passionate about the series will have undoubtedly already bought the game on the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 and, unlike games from other genres that can offer improved visuals and smoother performance over consoles, Rock Band 4 isn’t the type of title that would benefit from such improvements.
But hey, it may happen one day, so keep those fingers crossed.