In another sign that the music game genre just isn’t what it used to be, Harmonix has stated that they will not be releasing a Rock Band 4 this year. Chris Rigopulous, VP of strategy and business at Harmonix told Game Informer that the company will however continue to support the franchise with new DLC.
While sitting down with Game Informer, Chris let the following titbits loose concerning discs and DLC:
Comparing profitability of discs vs. DLC is really an apples-to-oranges thing. Ideally, they should be complementary parts of the whole. DLC represents an ongoing opportunity to improve the economics of the disc release. This is substantial enough in our case that it might affect how we think about our retail strategy.
For example, the price for Rock Band 3 was recently reduced to $19.99. A price cut like that has much more compelling economics when you consider that each unit sold represents the potential creation of a new DLC customer. For all of these reasons, we’re not planning a Rock Band 4 disc release in 2011.
Seeing as how the game between 2 and 3 didn’t change as significantly as some may have wanted, this is smart thinking to just take the existing product and support it with loads of DLC, especially since the newest thing a retail release would most likely bring is new music.
In the same interview, Chris revealed that the company had “hit a significant milestone”, with the series surpassing 100 million songs downloaded.
I should probably take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks to all of our fans who have propelled us to these heights and to all of the artists whose music lies at the heart of the Rock Band experience.
Rock Band 3 is a big game with lots of available music content and lots of new goals and challenges. We want to give our fans the time to explore that fully. But rest assured that Harmonix is still developing new ideas and concepts to advance the Rock Band franchise, and we look forward to sharing those when the time is right.
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