About ten years ago, the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchise were a new and exciting fusion of music and video games. Many gamers were turned on to music, much of it heavy, by playing the games. Dragonforce and The Sword were among the bands that got popularity boosts by having their music featured in the games. Meanwhile, Activision and Harmonix raked in the bucks by charging for the guitar controllers, and eventually, whole band setups. The games were interactive and fun. but with both companies releasing new games every few months, guitar fatigue set in.
What’s kind of amazing is that games were still being made as recently as 2012 (Rock Band Blitz). But there hasn’t been a Rock Band or Guitar Hero game made for the next generation consoles yet. That might be about to change, though. Bloomberg reports that today, Harmonix, the makers of Rock Band, released two new songs for Rock Band 3. Apparently, they also sent out a poll last month, asking if there would be any interest in a Rock Band for the Playstation 4 and XBox One.
This doesn’t mean there will be new games made just yet. But there would almost definitely be some degree of nostalgia of the games 6 or 7 years past their peak, and probably at least some degree of interest for people to play on the next gen consoles. It’s probably a wait and see proposition, but there are at least five years worth of new songs that could be added to the newer versions. As long as they don’t beat a dead horse and over-release too many games, we might not have seen the last of guitar controller-based games yet.
[via Metal Injection]
