New Rock Band Game Apparently In Development For Latest Consoles

Jesus Christ. Those games are dead. They lived their time. Stop bringing it back to fail and die hard again.

If they want to make the game. Why stop them?

A new Rock Band would be welcome. I enjoyed the peripheral-based rhythm games of 2005 to 2010. They were milked to death (After the original Guitar Hero, only Rock Band/World Tour really did anything with 20 iterations to work with), but I wouldn’t mind Rock Band having a new iteration on a non-annual basis.

That said, they are going to have to do a good job updating the series, on account of this not being 2008 anymore. The recent release of Theatrhyth: Curtain Call, a handheld game for $40 with 221 playable tracks without DLC, highlights this.

First, any new game is going to need a new kind of pricing structure. These sorts of games are largely what players make of them, meaning that the songs that get played the most will largely be games they already like. so other than the game’s disc and a guitar controller, a lot of choice must be given to the player.

I would suggest making the game’s basic bundle be the game’s disc and guitar for $60. The base game should contain no less than 50 or so songs, but the emphasis should be on containing as many modes and ways of manipulating the songs available as possible. The 50 included songs should be based on being a small smattering of genres from the 50’s to contemporary stuff that shows off everything the game has to offer. At very least, all of these games should be playable with every instrument made for the game. Also note that all the game’s modes and whatnot should be included on disc. This is partially to make sure nobody feels ripped off and partially to limit the downloads to just the songs, which is important since consoles often have problems with storage.

The other controllers should also be cheaper than in 2007 or so. The drums alone cost $130! Even if advancements in hardware have been made, the fact is that it was constant new releases and high prices that grounded this subgenre, not acoustics. A microphone should not cost more than $15, the drums no more than $50, and extra Guitar controllers should not cost more than $30. If upgrading the tech makes this impossible, then use old tech! This way, the full band bundle can be about $120 with four players possible, a much more reasonable proposition than the bundles of well over $300 popping up in 2010.

The real big challenge for Rock Band is going to have to be getting people songs. I have a sort of suggestion for that. First, the individual songs can not be too expensive. I would recommend $1 being the default and prices as high as $1.50 being reserved for no more than a few songs on the service. If half the reason people play a game is to listen to the soundtrack, then you can’t be more expensive than places like iTunes. I would also recommend that some tracks actually be less than $1 under special circumstances. Maybe a song has no place for drums or singing. In that case, people should still be able to play it, but should not have to pay as much as they would for a song with these features.

Second, songs should be bundled together in “albums” of related songs. If people want to make Rock Band fit for them, they are going to focus on specific categories of music. There can be a fair amount of leeway with the pricing and sizes of these albums, but as long as they are cheaper than the sum of their parts and said songs are all individually available, that works well. Though I would recommend letting people save 50% off the price in the larger packs.

I’m going to through out some random ideas, based on the songs already available for DLC. There are 5 songs from “3 Doors Down” available, so bundle them together for $3.50 or $4. Blink-182 has 13 songs available, and should be roughly $8 or $9. The Beatles had an entire game with 45 songs and another 29 as DLC for 74 total. Make that lineup a $40 bundle, the cost of a budget game or expansion pack that doubles the base game’s.

This also extends to other ways of grouping music. For example, genres. What about a “Greatest of Grunge” album or two? You could get a package of 13 songs for $10 or 30 songs for $20. You can do it based on date of release. A “Yearning for the 90’s” album combining Rock, Metal, Punk, Alternative, and other oddities of the era could do something crazy like including 200 songs from that decade for $60.

DLC is often used in a way that hurts games, but Rock Band is one game that can be improved via DLC better than frequent sequels. Sell the game and infrastructure for a reasonable price, let people spend however much they want on their specific favorite songs, artists, and genres, and throw in free updates, sales, price drops, and new songs to make sure they keep on coming back for the next few years.

As for a Wii U version… this is one game that would make a lot of sense on the Wii U. Looking back at the craze of 2005 to 2010, the Wii was often the consumer’s console of choice. The Wii versions of Guitar Hero 3, World Tour, 5, Warriors of Rock, Metallica, Aerosmith, and Van Halen each outsold their 360 AND PS3 counterparts, with over 13 million games in the series being sold on the Wii alone. Rock Band was a bit more PS360-oriented, but even then best-selling version of The Beatles: Rock Band, the last big hit in the series, was the Wii version, and the series sold 8 million on the Wii. More recently, the Wii U version of Just Dance 2015 outsold its PS3, PS4, 360, and XOne counterparts, suggesting the music fans are mostly still on the Wii U.

Not to mention that music games are hardly technically demanding. Rock Band is not exactly a series known for creating intense scenarios for the hardware, and even if they did, simply lowering the Wii U version’s resolution is hardly a deal breaker.