While it won’t be coming out until October 6th, Harmonix already has long-term plans laid out for the return of their music rhythm game, Rock Band 4. This is the studio following through on their statement that they wouldn’t treat this installment as something iterative like Activision’s Guitar Hero franchise, but more along the lines of a platform that will evolve and change over time. On the topic of this support, Harmonix CEO Steve Janiak stated, “we already have a team hard at work building new features for the platform, some based on player feedback, along with some surprises, including a new mode that changes gameplay in a really significant way that we think people are going to love.”
One of those new features is the addition of Variable Breakneck Speed. Long requested by fans and a first for the series, the feature will allow players to control the speed at which musical notes will scroll across the music track independent of each other. There will also be a bunch of new competitive and social features added, and is slated for release on December 8th.
While it is nice to see Harmonix’s enthusiasm for keeping their single release on PS4 and Xbox One updated and new, we won’t know how substantive this update will be until we play the retail version, the launch of which is very close.