Rock Band 4 by no means made it to PC. Developer Harmonix mentioned in 2015 that it was unsure whether or not there was a enough viewers for the sport on PC, after which in 2016 it proved that fear legitimate by launching a crowdfunding marketing campaign for a PC model that hardly achieved half of its $1.5 million objective. However none of that issues now anyway, as a result of Harmonix introduced as we speak that January 25 would be the finish of the street for Rock Band 4 DLC releases.
Harmonix put out quite a lot of music for Rock Band 4 over time: Almost 3,000 songs, and greater than 3,000 when you embody recreation soundtracks. And to be clear, these songs will not be going away: Product supervisor Daniel Sussman mentioned stay companies for Rock Band 4 will proceed as traditional, and “you possibly can play the songs you personal inside Rock Band 4 for so long as you want.”
However Harmonix was acquired by Epic Video games in November 2021 with the concept that the studio would “work with Epic to create musical journeys and gameplay for Fortnite,” and that is apparently the place the main focus is nowadays.
“The Harmonix group has been laborious at work over the past two years to develop Fortnite Competition, which brings rhythm motion gaming (and extra) to the Fortnite ecosystem,” Sussman wrote. “It’s free to play, we now have a rotating collection of songs that you could play (at no cost) anytime. In case you are a fan of the rhythm recreation class, Fortnite Competition is the place to be; and with help for RB4 devices coming, this isn’t the time to hold up your guitars simply but.”
So there you’ve gotten it: Rock Band 4 is (partly) lifeless and Fortnite is (partly) guilty. On the similar time, eight years is a hell of a run: We have seen an terrible lot of video games get put out to pasture a complete lot faster than that. Fortnite Competition or not, it is comprehensible that Harmonix would possibly wish to transfer on to one thing else.
Fortnite Competition “leans closely on the Rock Band method,” within the phrases of options producer Mollie Taylor, who spent a while with it in 2023, however at this level it lacks the magic of the unique.
“It is an excellent introduction to rhythm video games for informal gamers who would have by no means tried one in any other case—particularly those that missed out on the Rock Band/Guitar Hero period—however for a Harmonix endeavour it is awfully barebones,” she wrote. “Just a little extra polish and it might be a bit simpler to look previous the basic F2P monetisation of all of it and perhaps even splurge a bit. Till then, I feel I will be default dancing my method out of the lobbies for some time.”
One in every of her chief complaints was the shortage of help for pretend-instrument controllers: It is actually simply not as a lot enjoyable to rock out along with your mouse and keyboard out, in any case. With upcoming instrument controller help confirmed, perhaps Fortnite Competition will turn out to be the correct Rock Band substitute Epic and Harmonix intend it to be. And if not, nicely, we by no means had Rock Band 4 anyway, so on that entrance, issues actually have not modified in any respect.
This is not the primary time Epic has turned a genre-focused developer towards Fortnite: It additionally lately had Rocket League developer Psyonix, which it bought just a few years in the past, produce a racing mode for Fortnite quite than make a standalone new recreation. It clearly nonetheless sees Fortnite as the middle of its “metaverse” desires.