This week, Harmonix threw a public party during E3 for fans to come to LA and try out Rock Band 4 in the Mayan Theater, along with newly announced features like freestyle guitar solos, vocal freestyle, and custom drum fills. I was already heading there on my own, but convenient timing led to me becoming a writer for RBA, so I decided I would spend some of the time talking to Aaron Trites, getting as much out of him as I could between forum users’ questions and my own. The following is not a transcript of our talks(there were several hours over two days), quotes are not exact quotes, but it is sorted into categories you can drop to and all the information is accurate to the best of his knowledge(remember, Aaron is not a coder, not a lawyer, and has been at E3 all week, so some of the super new details/responses are beyond him until he returns and gets situated again). I am writing down everything I am allowed to repeat from this week.



Rock Band 4 Hardware

What hardware purchase options will be available at launch?

Guitar and disc bundle

Band in a Box bundle

Xbox One Legacy Adapter

For those who bought PAX East guitars, those will be delivered by October 6th

Standalone disc

Digital download

What hardware will not be available at launch?

Standalone guitar

Standalone drums

Standalone mic

Any bundle featuring a digital download code for the game, rather than a disc[This isn’t a locked-in option, but they are looking at it]

When can I get X configuration of hardware?

Per MadCatz: “The plan for hardware is just supporting these two bundles at launch. The earliest we’re looking at doing standalone hardware is Christmas or Q1 2016.”

Preorders are going to up for every launch configuration in every area of the world by June 19th, is that true?

“I have no clue, I’ve been in the dark with that since I’ve been here. You’d have to ask Christine about that since she’s in the office.”

Will every part of the world get Rock Band 4?

“We are planning on shipping worldwide.”

“Even Australia?”

“Worldwide. We can’t make retailers order us, but we’ll send stock to anyone who wants it.”

What happened to my preorder colors?

“The plan for preorder colors had been to give certain colors to certain retailers. Unfortunately, the problem that popped up was one of stock. Giving certain places certain colors constrained sales, both limiting how many large retailers could get, and what would happen in other areas of the world like Europe who don’t have those retailers. Factories would also have to be slower when it came time to swap back over to black, so in the interest of having instruments out there, we had to delay alternate colors. They aren’t cancelled, MadCatz is very excited about different-looking instruments, but we had to decide between giving people the ‘wrong’ color and people not getting anything.”

Why is E3 drowning in unique instrument colors?

“For this event, we pretty much hobbled together enough instruments for it. A lot of these are from the office, it’s all non-finalized hardware, which is why some are red and white. Consumers will get all black at retail.”

Where is the Xbox One Legacy Adapter?

“It is still being worked on. We have it set up for our own instruments, but it’s a surprisingly complicated process, we’ve been having to locate the people who coded the 360 chipset a decade ago. A lot of the features and design are still upcoming, we may even trip into some unexpected usage of them.”

“Like plain controllers since they have colored buttons?”

“Maybe! Even our guys working on it shrug when we ask about future compatibility. It’s a very unique piece of hardware, we’re all seeing where it goes.”

“According to many people, wired instruments will not work, is the Adapter going to have USB ports?”

“The design is not finalized at this time.”

Can I preorder a Legacy Adapter?

“Maybe. Once we finalize it, we’ll see where we are.”

“Basically depends on if you can crank them out super fast or not?”

“Pretty much. If they can be produced quickly, we may not take preorders and just send them into the world.”

Can people use their e-kits to drum?

“We’re very aware a bunch of hardcore players would like to. Unfortunately, game development as an indie studio is a numbers game, and we need to focus on first-party instruments to cast the widest net. We technically haven’t even finished converting every plastic instrument, but we will look at IONs and e-kits when we have time.”

How different do the new instruments feel?

The guitar buttons feel much nicer. They know how to sink in instead of tilting in on one side. The tilt sensor works flawlessly with even a slow tip(no more racing to the skies!). The strum bar does not click, but it feels much sturdier in its slot.

The drum pedal did not break from use from the several days of E3. Drum pads seemed to have nicer bounce. Both the red and green pads still shook from hard enough hits, sadly. Hopefully the plastic is stronger and won’t crack, at least.

The microphone did not invite itself to activate OD when someone breathed too close to it or if an insect flew by.

Rock Band 4 Software

Does Rock Band 4 support streaming yet?

“TBD.”

Will there be a lighter filter?

“Technically, it hasn’t been coded in yet.”

Will there be variable Breakneck/audio adjustment/incredibly detailed leaderboards?

“Same answer, we haven’t put that stuff in yet. Our E3 build only has lefty flip in the options menu, the mic volume is locked in place, highway speed is locked in place. We’ve never shown a game this early in development, so you guys are seeing a lot of bare-bones stuff since we’re still so far from release.”

Band World Tour is being called a Musical RPG, a lot of people wanted Rock Band World to be that years ago, so…?

“We haven’t called it a Musical RPG, that’s other places! We definitely are looking at more narrative hooks, branching paths, that kind of thing.”

Will there be colorblind/blind modes, or ease of access for the disabled?

“We’d love to, we’re talking with AbleGamers on how to integrate it, we just talked to them a few days ago. We’re throwing things around and seeing how to balance if we did like, Super Easy Mode or No-Kick Mode, people want to have fun and contribute, but a lot of people would game it.”

Will the keyboard work as a five-button?

“Maybe. That’s another thing with the Adapter that may end up being a complete accident, I don’t know if the keyboard can be read as a regular guitar to begin with.”

Will Practice Mode be in the game?

“Maybe. Most of the use came from the hardcore players working towards FCs. Again, game’s still in development, we’ll see as we go.”

What’s the deal with online multiplayer?

“That, it’s a numbers thing. We’ve done the math. We know exactly what it’ll cost[a lot], how many people it takes[decent chunk], how long it will be[several months]. On our Amplitude Telethon, we had a few other developers call in and they spoke very frankly about online multiplayer. For Octodad, they said it took their team something like eight months and $200,000 to even get that, and Rock Band is a lot more complicated than that, what with latency and score tracking and DLC library size. And the question was, would we make that cost back from it?”

“Probably not.”

“No. But I’ve been pushing all the feedback from that news, I know a lot of people want it, I would love to include it. But at the very least, it cannot be fit in by launch.”

Will Freestyling submit to Leaderboards?

“I honestly don’t know. It’s at least scored immediately, but I haven’t gotten an answer for that myself.”

Rock Band 4 Songs/DLC

How often is DLC going to come out with Rock Band 4?

“We haven’t decided on that yet. We kinda set a high bar with 281 weeks of weekly content, though.”

“Forums seemed to agree that just regular releases would be enough.”

“Oh yeah, we’ll definitely do regular at least. Just don’t know what intervals.”

Are we going to get prediction threads again?

“Could, if people want that.”

“Seems to work for Rocksmith.”

“Yeah, but it also makes that chunk of people get way too hyped up for no reason and then they just badmouth the news.”

“Like when the all-Pro pack was going to be Led Zeppelin and you got us Def Leppard?”

“Oh god, yeah.”

Will there be any chart fixes for broken disco flips, illegal charting methods, etc.?

“Incredibly unlikely. For disco flips, you have to be an Expert Pro drummer who owns those songs to even see it, so it isn’t seen by a lot of people, and we also aren’t really sure if we can fix it and resubmit it to the consoles as the same content.”

New press releases and articles say 1,500+ songs instead of 2,000+, what’s going on?

“That is more of a silly distinction. Our original headcount we used as a number was the number of offers for the storefront, so packs and albums counted in that. The plan is still all official Harmonix DLC will be moving forward, we didn’t accidentally lose hundreds of songs this month. We’re submitting songs right now to make sure we have as many as possible for launch, we aren’t stopping.”

What about RBN songs, what’s the real thing stopping those from porting?

“It’s pretty much who to contact. Relicensing our DLC is fine, we had to anyway, and we can specify new consoles. RBN is a little harder. A lot of that stuff is the most random-”

“Like the Cookie Monster song.”

“Exactly. Who do we need to talk to to move that? No idea. Some of it would be relatively easy, like just going to Subpop and asking, but there’s a lot of content there that isn’t on a label or doesn’t have a known owner.” [What I gathered from this is that partial RBN isn’t the least likely after official DLC is out]

How are Rock Band 3 Versions going to be handled?

“Oh, because the only differences were keys and harmonies, and now…”

“Yeah.”

“We don’t know. They legally had to be separate last time, we might have our hands tied.”

“Could you make their metadata identical and keep the names different so they could play together in a theoretical future online scenario?”

“Maybe!”

With your new focus on generation-long support, what kind of expansions are we talking about?

“Oh, it’s a lot of things. Some stuff that isn’t even songs. Venues, clothing. We may have some stuff planned for launch/shortly after.”

How did the [help with legacy harmonies] happen?

“It was just great timing. We’re very aware of that part of the community.”

“Even if you can’t acknowledge them.”

“Yeah, but we catch a lot of that stuff, and it worked out since most of the work was already done.”

“How about legally, it’s your call since it’s using the same input method?”

“Yeah, we didn’t need access to anything new, it wasn’t new content, so there’s wiggle room.”

Are there any exclusivity contracts still out there?

“To my knowledge, no, but I also don’t write them. Unless you’re in the room signing them, who knows. But I don’t think so. Still, it takes more than that to get some music. If certain bands didn’t like what they saw from it, they may not want to do it anymore regardless.”

“Like Van Halen, who didn’t even get to have their game sold?”

“Yeah, that’d be really sad if we couldn’t get Van Halen.”

There’s a lot of references to artists in that trailer, comments on any? Foo Fighters seemed an obvious one, but we could have guessed that anyway.

“Yeah.[Wait, did he confirm Foo Fighters as a disc artist? That’s not big/surprising news, but it is something] There’s a lot of references. Some are red herrings.”

Are any of the legacy songs in this E3 build a hint towards future disc/DLC songs[Hysteria is on the build]?

“Let me think.[Moar Muse!!!] I don’t think so? Maybe? I don’t know.”

Miscellaneous Questions

How’s that API export coming?

“Poorly. It was some person who left five years ago, getting passed to someone who left three years ago, now it’s do we dig through our employees to see who can recreate/find the old stuff, or do we focus on Rock Band 4?”

Rock Band 3 had a lot of songs on it that were weak on many instruments, are you gonna fix that for 4?

“Yes. The amount of directions we had to go in in 3 kinda caused that, but with Rock Band 4, we’re working towards a setlist that is quality for every part.”

Now that Xbox One has backwards compatibility, are you gonna put anything on it?

“I dunno, depends on how much work it takes.”

“Microsoft apparently just comes up to you and asks yes/no.”

“Oh, well then maybe!”

“Does that include Rock Band 3?”

“We may not even be able to do that one since it was at the tail end of our Viacom ties.”

“They might be able to prevent it?”

“Entirely possible.”[This is what happened to Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, it can’t be on the list since Capcom doesn’t have the Marvel license anymore]

Who is your favorite forum poster and why isn’t it Lawdog?

“It’s Lawdog.”

“Oh, really?”

“No.”