Rock Band 4: Back on the road again

If you’re the type of gamer who has a box somewhere under the stairs full of Rock Band peripherals, gathering dust in the wake of current-gen machines… well… you’re going to like this. Rock Band 4 is hitting those machines and bringing its huge existing back catalogue of tracks with it. Oh, and those dusty instruments? Harmonix, now working independently of EA, is working to enable legacy instruments, on top of a new set especially crafted in cahoots with Mad Catz for PS4 and XO.

We’re talking about a lot of songs here. A lot of songs: touching 2000, across over 500 artists of varying quality and repute. So just how much work is it to ensure they’ll make it across?

“Supporting DLC entitlements is a core pillar of the Rock Band franchise,” says project manager at Harmonix, Daniel Sussman. “We’ve always worked our butts off to respect the investments that people have made in our game. So, when it came time to roll up our sleeves and tackle the job of bringing seventh gen content over to eighth gen consoles, we knew we were in for the long haul.”

“Rock Band 4 is bringing its huge back catalogue of tracks with it”

“Outside of the core tech at play, one of the biggest challenges has to do with scale  we have so many songs. In fact, it took us over five years to build our library. We’re trying to redo all that work in a matter of months.”

This doesn’t mean that the team will put out the game and then shut up shop, oh no. In fact, during our chat with Sussman he confirms that plenty of new tracks and DLC will arrive, too. “We’re still working through the details of our DLC delivery schedule. This is an area where we want to be open to input. I have my own ideas about how much content we should deliver, but it’s really meaningful to hear directly from our community.” We’ll keep our ears to the ground for more info, including how the campaign mode will work, ahead of the game’s release later this year.