5 things we want in a new Rock Band

A new Rock Band hasn’t officially been announced yet, but let’s be honest, it’s going to happen. In light of this week’s rumors, which claim Harmonix is developing a new Rock Band for Xbox One and PS4, we thought we’d get ahead of the game and suggest a few things we’d like to see happen.

Legacy support for older instruments

I don’t know about you, but I still have all of my old Rock Band instruments tucked away in the back of my closet. They’re just waiting to be dusted off and played with again. It may not be in Harmonix’s best interest to allow us to use older instruments, but I’d sure love to save some money by being able to. It’s also entirely possible that possible that the new Xbox or PlayStation hardware might not allow support for legacy controllers. Call this one wishful thinking.

Innovate, but don’t make it too expensive

I know this is a weird thing to request seeing as how I just said I want to save some money, but if Harmonix can come out with some new instruments that won’t break the bank I might be interested. I’d like to see some sort of evolution of the Rock Band instruments that could more closely resemble real instruments instead of simple plastic toys with 5-colored buttons. I know that Rock Band 3 had Pro Mode with two iterations of a “real” guitar, but those cost over $100 each.

Allow access to our older libraries

This is another one of those things that I’m not too sure can work. I don’t know how the whole licensing thing works, but I’d sure love to be able to keep and play my older songs. Some of us have spent a TON of  money on DLC. Heck, we just saw the release of five new tracks. It’d be unfortunate to not be able to play those on the new Rock Band. Again, it might also be the case of Harmonix trying to, you know, make some money.

The return of steady DLC

We’ve sort of seen this these past two months. In January, we received three downloadable tracks for Rock Band 3. This month we received two more DLC tracks. While there’s obviously something more to the release of these new tracks, I’m also hoping it signifies the return of a steady stream of downloadable content. The way you keep a game like Rock Band fresh is by constantly offering new songs to play. Otherwise things get stale. After a nearly two year hiatus, I’m ready to start jamming again.

NO FROZEN

As amazing as Frozen was as a movie, and as addictive as its songs are, and as much money as these songs would make, there’s nothing about them that’s rock-ish. The last thing I want to hear are a bunch of people try to emulate Idina Menzel. Not even she can hit those notes in person, so I can imagine how bad Rock Band players would be with it.

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Of course, this is all contingent on two things: a new Rock Band is, in fact, coming, and it's not going to be some crappy mobile spinoff thing. Again, nothing has been confirmed at this point, but Harmonix has been acting awfully suspicious lately. With PAX East taking place next month in Harmonix’s hometown of Boston it’s possible the developer is waiting until their big party for the reveal. They certainly had some interesting tweets in regard to the rumor.