For a few years, music games kind of vanished. The genre that used to dominate store shelves went away as studios went back to the drawing board to decide how they could innovate on their music games. Rock Band and Guitar Hero returned in 2015 and did… decently. They didn't come back like their developers may have hoped but that might be because everyone's over the music genre.
That isn't stopping Harmonix from going head first into new technology with their Rock Band series. Rock Band is returning this March exclusively on PC with Oculus Rift. Players will be able to play Rock Band while being on stage, rocking out to their favorite songs as the crowd jumps and sings at their feet. Besides VR, Harmonix is allowing people to make their own sounds and notes during songs to make each song feel unique and different per performance.
You can play the traditional Rock Band experience in "Classic Mode" if you don't feel like messing around with sounds which could sound horrible. The game will come with 50 songs (we don't know which ones quite yet) and more will be added through DLC. Players can use existing Xbox One or PS4 Rock Band 4 guitars or they can buy a new one with a copy of the game on Amazon for $69.99.
Sadly, the game will only allow you to play with guitars. That means no singing or drumming in Rock Band VR!
For those PS4 players holding out hope for a PSVR version, we've got bad news for you. Rock Band's Twitter account revealed that the game was funded by Oculus, meaning they will probably never release it on other VR platforms.
You can view the required specs for the game and a trailer below.
Required Controllers: Oculus Touch, Rock Band 4 Guitar Controller.
Recommended Processor: Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater.
Recommended Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD R9 290 equivalent or greater.
Recommended Memory: 8 GB.
Compatible Guitar Controllers: PlayStation 4 guitar controller – Bluetooth, Xbox One guitar controller – Windows 10, Xbox One Wireless Adapter for Windows.
Rock Band VR is headed to the @Oculus Rift on March 23rd! Pre-Orders are available now: https://t.co/Ffw2R1xVP9 pic.twitter.com/uytARb9TTG
— Rock Band (@RockBand) February 6, 2017
Rock Band VR releases March 23rd, 2017 exclusively for Oculus Rift.
