Rock Band has ‘a lot of life left’

Guitar Hero may be on hiatus, but its rival Rock Band is healthier than ever.

That’s according to Harmonix’s VP of product development Greg LoPiccolo, who told Industry Gamers that the studio is still very much committed” to the franchsie and that we can expect to see more from Rock Band in the future.

We think there’s a lot of life left in the Rock Band franchise and there’s a lot of creative directions to take that,” said LoPiccolo. We certainly remain committed to that. But then beyond that, we would love to make games that are new musical experiences to throw them out there and have people accept them and get inspired by them.”

The Harmonix exec was also keen to point out that while guitar gaming has declined, the public hasn’t lost interest in the general music games genre. As a result, any future Rock Band titles may be different.

We’re not quite sure what form that takes right now, but even in Rock Band 3 we were exploring some new ideas, some new directions and we’re very pleased with how the Pro stuff came out,” said Piccolo.

We’re interested in how that could evolve. And all along we’ve been working on other kinds of evolutionary directions to take Rock Band and Rock Band gameplay that we find exciting.

We want to keep creating things that we think are cool and compelling and push the envelope in new directions, and then the market will pronounce its judgment on our efforts. But that’s, to some degree, out of our hands. It’s our job to make good stuff.”