Musically-inclined gamers, have we got good news for you. Harmonix has just confirmed that they’re working on a version for the latest generation of consoles, namely the PS4 and Xbox One.
Rock Band, along with similar titles such as Guitar Hero, grew in popularity in last decade, leading Viacom Inc.’s MTV unit to buy Harmonix for $175 million in 2006. Trends in casual gaming have since shifted toward digital and mobile play and Harmonix was sold to investment firm Columbus Nova LLC in 2010.
The band genre, once a significant part of software and hardware sales, has been silent for the past few years. Activision Blizzard Inc. last released a Guitar Hero game in 2010 and disbanded the unit a year later. The genre was a three-year fad largely driven by casual gamers, said Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen & Co.
The most recent full game in the franchise, Rock Band 3, was released in 2010. An offshoot, Rock Band Blitz, arrived in 2012 and focused on standard controllers rather than big plastic instruments. In April 2013, after 281 weeks of DLC additions to the Rock Band store, the studio held a sing-along to mark the end of that era.
When reached out for comment by Bloomberg, Harmonix was cagey about details, “We’re excited by how enthusiastic our fans have been in regards to our most recent DLC releases, and we think it’s awesome that people are speculating about the future of the franchise!”
“While we still don’t have anything to announce, hundreds of thousands of unique users are still actively playing Rock Band games each month. This passion our fans have shown for Rock Band over the years suggests that rock truly hasn’t died, and we’ve always been clear that we’d love to return to the franchise when the time is right,” is all they are willing to reveal at this point.
Well, better late than never.
