Rock Band 4 announced for PS4 and Xbox One

As it stands now, I think I'd rather just wait to get an Xbone slim and use backwards compatibility to play RB3 and its DLC with the keytar.

No keytar in RB4 means I have no real desire to get it, and no cross-platform DLC import means I don't even own the system I need to utilize RB4 if I were to get it.
Microsoft said they won't make 360 games work on XB1 if they require peripherals. I wish they would :(
 
So do we have concrete answers to the following questions?

Assuming the same platform family (360-->XBO or PS3-->PS4)

-What instruments will be compatible with Rock Band 4 (IONs, Mustang, Pro Strat, Keytar)?

-What DLC will be compatible with Rock Band 4?

-When will compatible DLC be available?

-What disc based exports will be compatible with Rock Band 4?

-Will Rock Band 3 songs be compatible with Rock Band 4 (if so how)?

-When can we order a disc/download only version of the game?

I feel like with each announcement of new pre-order/ platform DLC these questions get pushed further back.
 
Some of your questions are answered in the official FAQ.

-What instruments will be compatible with Rock Band 4 (IONs, Mustang, Pro Strat, Keytar)?
Any five-button-plus Rock Band guitar, any USB mic, and any traditional Rock Band drum set is compatible. No six-string Strat, no keytar, no IONs.
-What DLC will be compatible with Rock Band 4?
Everything minus Rock Band Network songs. Exports from previous Rock Band discs are supported.

-When will compatible DLC be available?
I don't think this has been answered.

-What disc based exports will be compatible with Rock Band 4?
Lego Rock Band, Rock Band, Rock Band 2, and Green Day: Rock Band are mentioned in the FAQ, although the way it's worded makes it sound like it might not be on day one.

-Will Rock Band 3 songs be compatible with Rock Band 4 (if so how)?
Not at launch. Harmonix has said they're exploring the possibility, though.

-When can we order a disc/download only version of the game?
PS4 digital preorders are up now. No word on disc-only PS4 preorders or digital/disc-only Xbox One preorders.
 
-What DLC will be compatible with Rock Band 4?

-When will compatible DLC be available?

We have a pretty definitive answer for the first one (basically, everything except RBN tracks, which could very well come at a later date), but I'm curious about the second one as well.

Will it be a slow trickle or all at once?
 
Every time this thread is bumped and it's not to inform us that they have got IONs working with Rock Band 4 I become a little more bitter. I was so excited to purchase a new version, but without that I'm out. I don't care if my ~1800 songs or whatever it is are left to rot. No IONs, no sale.
 
We have a pretty definitive answer for the first one (basically, everything except RBN tracks, which could very well come at a later date), but I'm curious about the second one as well.

Will it be a slow trickle or all at once?
I believe there will be a couple hundred at launch and the rest will come in batches. They have to add things to every old song like freestyle vocal lines, freestyle guitar paths, etc.
 
I'm mostly wondering if we can use the GH5 guitar for RB4 since that's the one I use for RB3. If not, I will have to buy the guitar bundle.
 
I'm definitely not understanding this but I really hope this isn't along the lines of gripes I used to see when MMO patch notes came out where people would essentially complain that modelers weren't fixing game combat code.

Nah, but it certainly takes up resources like money for licensing them, and QA for testing etc, but eh, I'm not too bothered about songs, I have more DLC than I'll ever play already, I just wanted a more refined RB3
 
The lack of RBN support makes me sad. Some of my favorite tracks (Sunny Day Real Estate, Band of Horses) were released that way.

Edit: Just remembered that Airbrushed is also RBN. That really sucks.
 
We have a pretty definitive answer for the first one (basically, everything except RBN tracks, which could very well come at a later date), but I'm curious about the second one as well.

Will it be a slow trickle or all at once?

Ewwwwwwwww. WTF. Almost every song I downloaded was from RBN.
Fuck that, I'll wait till they support the songs.
 
Any five-button-plus Rock Band guitar, any USB mic, and any traditional Rock Band drum set is compatible. No six-string Strat, no keytar, no IONs.

Oh dear no GH controllers mentioned, this isn't good news for me! Can't stand the RB strat controllers! Shit!

Looks like I'll be holding off on a pre-order until I know how reliable and sturdy these new guitar controllers are. Because it seems like I'm out of options and will have to shell out £110!

EDIT: Scratch that!

Q: So what is the official update on any hardware peripheral not manufactured for Rock Band and their compatibility with Rock Band 4?
A: Just about all wireless instrument peripherals will work with Rock Band 4. We’ll have a detailed compatibility chart that we’ll release closer to launch.

Phew, crisis possibly averted!
 
The lack of RBN support makes me sad. Some of my favorite tracks (Sunny Day Real Estate, Band of Horses) were released that way.

Edit: Just remembered that Airbrushed is also RBN. That really sucks.

Oh....oh god! Something else just hit me....."The Touch" & "Till All Are One" by Stan Bush are both RBN songs! And "St Elmo's Fire"

K19VR0z.jpg
 
Microsoft said they won't make 360 games work on XB1 if they require peripherals. I wish they would :(

From my understanding it's not "won't". It's that they haven't figured it out yet and probably won't by the time BC officially launches. I'm sure they'd love USB peripherals to work with BC.

Nah, but it certainly takes up resources like money for licensing them, and QA for testing etc, but eh, I'm not too bothered about songs, I have more DLC than I'll ever play already, I just wanted a more refined RB3

The costs still aren't one to one. Licensing and QAing songs are different costs and, more importantly, man power/opportunity costs compared to putting in features like online by launch. Especially when you consider the retailers are probably incentivising pre-order bonuses one way or another.
 
Seems like, in a good faith gesture, Harmonix could at least offer me the DLC I bought on Xbox360 at a discounted price for PS4. They could charge me whatever they have to pay for the songs and forgo their portion of the proceeds. Everybody wins in that scenario: the artist/publisher get their money, I get the song at at least a discounted price, and Harmonix while not making any money off the resale of the song, gets a myriad of people like me who will otherwise not buy the game, to consider hopping onboard.

Logistically it should be simple. They have hooks in Live and PSN. Let me log into each on their site, do a quick carry over of what I've bought from one to the other, and show/provide those tracks at a discount on their in game store.

I can't imagine there would be any practical issues there, and as for resources to implement it, it doesn't seem to be a terrible burden. The influx of console-switchers who would otherwise eschew the game being motivated to buy it would certainly offset their costs, considering immediate money earned for the game and rebuying of plastic instruments, not to mention future DLC sales they wouldn't otherwise get from this population of gamers. I hope they consider something like this.
 
Seems like, in a good faith gesture, Harmonix could at least offer me the DLC I bought on Xbox360 at a discounted price for PS4. They could charge me whatever they have to pay for the songs and forgo their portion of the proceeds. Everybody wins in that scenario: the artist/publisher get their money, I get the song at at least a discounted price, and Harmonix while not making any money off the resale of the song, gets a myriad of people like me who will otherwise not buy the game, to consider hopping onboard.

Logistically it should be simple. They have hooks in Live and PSN. Let me log into each on their site, do a quick carry over of what I've bought from one to the other, and show/provide those tracks at a discount on their in game store.

I can't imagine there would be any practical issues there, and as for resources to implement it, it doesn't seem to be a terrible burden. The influx of console-switchers who would otherwise eschew the game being motivated to buy it would certainly offset their costs, considering immediate money earned for the game and rebuying of plastic instruments, not to mention future DLC sales they wouldn't otherwise get from this population of gamers. I hope they consider something like this.

Logistically it is not simple. They'd likely have to get permission from 1st parties, and since far more people would going 360-PS4 than the other way around, Microsoft probably wouldn't agree to it.
 
Logistically it is not simple. They'd likely have to get permission from 1st parties, and since far more people would going 360-PS4 than the other way around, Microsoft probably wouldn't agree to it.

Why? What permission would they need from MS? Harmonix certainly has a list of games that my Live account bought from my Xbox360, and a way to confirm that I am the owner of that account. They don't need to ask MS for permission to access that.

Then they just use that information to offer me the DLC at a discounted price on my PSN account. As if it were a sale, preorder bonus, or any other discount.

The reason I proposed that solution is that I presumed it was a way to circumvent any stonewalling by either party. I don't see how they'd have any control over it.
 
Why? What permission would they need from MS? Harmonix certainly has a list of games that my Live account bought from my Xbox360, and a way to confirm that I am the owner of that account. They don't need to ask MS for permission to access that.

Then they just use that information to offer me the DLC at a discounted price on my PSN account. As if it were a sale, preorder bonus, or any other discount.

The reason I proposed that solution is that I presumed it was a way to circumvent any stonewalling by either party. I don't see how they'd have any control over it.

Actually Harmonix can't tell what you own. Only Microsoft/Sony can.

For you to transfer songs from Microsoft to Sony or the other way around would require Microsoft and Sony to share customer purchase histories with each other, which is about as likely as Target sharing their customer purchases with Wal Mart.


edit: For the record not even Bungie was allowed to know who purchased Halo: Combat Evolved via Xbox Live for a bonus they wanted to give out years back.
 
Seems like, in a good faith gesture, Harmonix could at least offer me the DLC I bought on Xbox360 at a discounted price for PS4. They could charge me whatever they have to pay for the songs and forgo their portion of the proceeds. Everybody wins in that scenario: the artist/publisher get their money, I get the song at at least a discounted price, and Harmonix while not making any money off the resale of the song, gets a myriad of people like me who will otherwise not buy the game, to consider hopping onboard.

Logistically it should be simple. They have hooks in Live and PSN. Let me log into each on their site, do a quick carry over of what I've bought from one to the other, and show/provide those tracks at a discount on their in game store.

I can't imagine there would be any practical issues there, and as for resources to implement it, it doesn't seem to be a terrible burden. The influx of console-switchers who would otherwise eschew the game being motivated to buy it would certainly offset their costs, considering immediate money earned for the game and rebuying of plastic instruments, not to mention future DLC sales they wouldn't otherwise get from this population of gamers. I hope they consider something like this.

I'm not sure that would be much cheaper than buying the other console, at least if you have a lot of DLC. Say they only charged for the console maker's part of each song (?33%), and each song costs an average of $1.15 (idk the actual amount). That would be $0.38 per song. I have around 800 DLC songs, so it would cost me about $300 to rebuy all songs.
 
Actually Harmonix can't tell what you own. Only Microsoft/Sony can.

For you to transfer songs from Microsoft to Sony or the other way around would require Microsoft and Sony to share customer purchase histories with each other, which is about as likely as Target sharing their customer purchases with Wal Mart.


edit: For the record not even Bungie was allowed to know who purchased Halo: Combat Evolved via Xbox Live for a bonus they wanted to give out years back.


Yup, there is no way around this.

You could do leaderboard data, but then whats to stop me from going over to a friends house with my hard drive with all DLC then just running through them etc, console manufactures make this impossible
 
Seriously, Harmonix is the kind of developer where if they could have figured out a way to let you take your songs between platforms, they would have.

They're already converting 2500ish DLC items to another platform, upgrading those songs, and sending it through two companies' cert processes with their own money and not charging a dime to get all your songs in the current generation with a new game for free.
 
Seriously, Harmonix is the kind of developer where if they could have figured out a way to let you take your songs between platforms, they would have.

They're already converting 2500ish DLC items to another platform, upgrading those songs, and sending it through two companies' cert processes with their own money and not charging a dime to get all your songs in the current generation with a new game for free.

The announcement of this game is ultimately what swayed me to pull the trigger on a new system, going with XB1 over PS4 - I knew my old content would never go cross platform. Anyone who expects that is expecting way too much. Old instrument compatibility and imported DLC is all I ever wanted.
 
At the very least i would love to buy the full soundtrack for each game rb1 pack rb2 pack andrb3 pack. Not sure if thats even feasible without pricing it high.
 
HMX just keeps digging that hole.
 
I also wonder why Xbox 1 digital pre-orders don't get a 10 pack either. I wonder if all the bands in the 10 extra songs are owned by Sony's record label or something...

MS exclusive pack coming perhaps?


And just went and bought an XBO today just for this game. Now to wait for information about getting my old instruments to work.
 
As someone who is buying the game on Xbox One, I'm not happy about there being songs I won't be able to access at launch. But I understand that Harmonix needs every bit of help they can get with promotional materials and if Sony made them a good offer, I hope it helps.

I wouldn't normally defend such a practice but I am worried about RB4 not being a success and Harmonix ending the series. The plastic instrument genre is important to me and I want this game to be a real success.
 
Microsoft said they won't make 360 games work on XB1 if they require peripherals. I wish they would :(
Fucking hell, that just ruined everything. I have no desire to keep a 360 lying around when every other game will likely be backwards compatible with the Xbone.

Guess I'll have to hope keyboards are added to RB4.
 
Fucking hell, that just ruined everything. I have no desire to keep a 360 lying around when every other game will likely be backwards compatible with the Xbone.

Guess I'll have to hope keyboards are added to RB4.
Since EA announced that they will be putting 360 games in EA Access, I'm thinking that maybe they could convince Microsoft to allow Rock Band games to be ported over. I will be begging via email lol.
 
Shit I didn't know about the rock band network thing. That's a little disappointing, but I hope they're in soon. Too much of the random metal I played was in RBN

I'd love to get the shit digitally but i need new instruments too. I'm in a pickle

I wonder if I have any RL friends who want the game but don't need instruments...
 
As someone who is buying the game on Xbox One, I'm not happy about there being songs I won't be able to access at launch. But I understand that Harmonix needs every bit of help they can get with promotional materials and if Sony made them a good offer, I hope it helps.

I wouldn't normally defend such a practice but I am worried about RB4 not being a success and Harmonix ending the series. The plastic instrument genre is important to me and I want this game to be a real success.

I had debated about putting off getting a new system and just getting it and the game later, like maybe next year. But I am with you in wanting this to be a success and feel the need to support Harmonix on opening day for this.
 
Fucking hell, that just ruined everything. I have no desire to keep a 360 lying around when every other game will likely be backwards compatible with the Xbone.

Guess I'll have to hope keyboards are added to RB4.
Since EA announced that they will be putting 360 games in EA Access, I'm thinking that maybe they could convince Microsoft to allow Rock Band games to be ported over. I will be begging via email lol.
Again. They're not choosing to not port that stuff. They just literally haven't figured out how to make USB peripherals work yet. Similar to how they're still trying to figure out multi disc games.

I see where they're coming from, but despise this policy. No Beatles and no HMX/Neversoft Guitar Hero on my Xbox One sucks, and the only other non-music game that I own physically on 360 is UMvC3.
It's not a policy.
 
I also wonder why Xbox 1 digital pre-orders don't get a 10 pack either. I wonder if all the bands in the 10 extra songs are owned by Sony's record label or something...

I'm sure there will be some sort of "exclusive pack" on Xbox One for the digital download. It's just not up.

Again. They're not choosing to not port that stuff. They just literally haven't figured out how to make USB peripherals work yet. Similar to how they're still trying to figure out multi disc games.

In a perfect world, Microsoft would learn something from the dongle Harmonix is developing. Either that, or allow backwards compatibility with the dongle. Ah well.
 
Can you explain what you mean by "rushing to get things out and done" means in relation to the pre-orders? Not sure I get that part and I'm trying to understand.

Sorry i didn't get back to this sooner. I mean, its poorly worded, and i don't want to make claims, but just given the kickstarter, sales, trends, and just seeing the way things have been, i'm worried this is a game that needs to get out in order to basically keep HMX on solid ground, and possibly offering the DLC packages has been a bit of cash flow. Its just a vibe, and i could be completely off-base, but that's how it seems from my angle, looking in.
 
In a perfect world, Microsoft would learn something from the dongle Harmonix is developing. Either that, or allow backwards compatibility with the dongle. Ah well.
I think the complication comes from the fact that the Xbox One is being tricked in to thinking it's a 360 for BC to work, so USB peripherals would have to be tricked in to thinking they're running on a Xbox One, then tricked again that it's actually a 360 (if I'm understanding the situation correctly). Still, it would be cool if they could learn something from it.
 
Top Bottom