Harmonix says Rock Band has a lot of life left, would like to see a music game future with more creativity

,”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. 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. …Within Rock Band, I think we are very much committed to the franchise. 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. The Fender Squire Guitar… we’re incredibly proud of how that came out and the way it kind of conceptually pushes music gaming in a new space where you can pick this thing up and learn to play guitar, or keys, or drums. So we’re interested in that thread and how that could evolve. And all along we’ve been working on other kind of evolutionary directions to take Rock Band and Rock Band game play that we find exciting. So I think from our perspective 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.” - Harmonix VP of Product Development Greg LoPiccolo

So what’s ahead for the Rock Band franchise? Mr. LoPiccolo isn’t saying, but he did hint at a future where music games allow for more creativity.

“There’s a lot of other threads that I don’t really want to necessarily get very specific on, mostly because of the stuff we’re building that is really very crude and doesn’t work very well yet, but we see a lot of other creative possibilities for music gaming. One thing for instance that really has not been successfully explored that we would love to crack in some way is music gaming experiences that allow the player some creative input. For instance, Rock Band was really fun, but you’re really pretending to play other people’s music. I think it would be I think really exciting to come up with a game experience where, like in lots of other games, you have some creative choice. There’s lots of games where you kind of get to make stuff or you make tactical choices that have consequences and it would be great to apply some of those.”

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