Dust down your plastic guitars kids, Rock Band might just be making a comeback

20 Feb 2015

Reports have emerged that Rock Band may see the release of the first new game in its series for a number of years.

Last month Harmonix, the developers of the Rock Band series, sent out a survey to fans asking which devices people own and whether they would be interested in a new game.

This is a surprising move as many experts in the industry have written off the instrument-driven gaming sector, mainly because it was casual gamers, rather than hardcore fans, that drove it’s spike in popularity in the middle of the last decade.

The industry’s fame reached its zenith not long after Harmonix was bought by Viacom. It lost its popularity as mobile gaming and smart technology quickly took hold.

“After a while, people got tired of it,” said analyst Doug Creutz in Bloomberg. “I don’t think they stopped gaming – a lot went to Facebook and mobile.”

Rock Band would go on to become 2008’s top-selling game, but soon lost money as Viacom sold it on.

“I really don’t think we’ll see any big revival of the plastic instrument trend,” said Creutz, with the last Rock Band game having come out back in 2012. However Harmonix haven’t ruled out the release.

“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,” said the company in a statement to IGN.

“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.”

Guitar image via Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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