Harmonix is bringing the band back together for an encore, it seems, after the studio confirmed that Rock Band 4 is indeed in development for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Though speculation had been rife for some time, the company formally announced the new music title during GDC, with a release date set for the latter stages of 2015. Perhaps the most enticing facet, though, is the fact that Rock Band 4 will allow players to import all existing content from PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, all the while supporting any existing peripherals that are no doubt collecting dust around your home.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Harmonix’s Daniel Sussman spoke about the demand for a series resurgence and how he feels the time is now right to release a new iteration that isn’t a simple rehash of existing ideas.
After taking some time off, it was really interesting to kind of come back and play the games that we bled and sweat over for years and years and years. Two things emerged very quickly: One was ‘holy motherf***, these games are FUN!
At the same time we were able to be quite critical of the work that we had done and saw lots of room for improvement. And that was really important to us as well because we are all creative people and it was important for us to be able to sink our teeth into to something that was deserving of the 4 at the end of the title. We didn’t just want to rehash Rock Band 3 for new consoles. We felt it was really important for us to evolve the gameplay in a way that would be interesting.
Rock Band 4 is set to be the first mainline installment in the series for a full five years, and will reportedly support over 2,000 musical tracks to sing, strum and drum along to. It’s expected to debut on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in late 2015.