Hi from Harmonix development land! With the release date of Rock Band 4 just a day away, we wanted to give you a rundown of everything you need to know about the upcoming release! We have had a blast making this game for you and we hope you have a blast playing with friends, family or even solo.

The music

The Rock Band experience starts with the music and Rock Band 4 has the strongest set list I think we’ve ever put together, with songs from bands such as Aerosmith, U2 and Van Halen. We’ve got metal (Avenged Sevenfold), the King (Elvis Presley), some up and comers that will blow you away, and… so much great music. Here’s our full set list:

Freestyle guitar solos

Rock Band 4 is chock full of innovations but the feature we’re most excited about is the Freestyle Guitar Solo feature. With Freestyle Guitar Solos, you get to bust out your own awesome guitar solos. While we’ve adhered to our principles of accessibility to make it easy to sound great right away, we’ve also built a system with gameplay and depth – it’s a new way to play Rock Band that fits right into the core fantasy that makes Rock Band great. We’ve developed a lot of great tech to make you sound awesome all the time while crafting totally individual, face melting solos.

Awesome new hardware

While based on the classic and battle-tested design of the previous Rock Band controllers, we have taken every opportunity for hardware improvement. The guitar brings back the classic Fender Stratocaster look along with a number of design improvements:

Accelerometer for improved tilt functionality

Fret buttons are more responsive and durable

Native Bluetooth wireless connections – no more USB adapters

The drums have also taken a step forward with a more durable kick pedal, more responsive and quieter drum heads, and a new cymbal pack that will be available for purchase shortly after launch.

Finally, we’ve developed a brand new microphone that allows for more gain with less distortion – sing louder and be heard!

Break out your old songs and gear

Our back catalogue of over 1,500 songs has been updated with new gameplay, so that every song now supports all the new Rock Band 4 gameplay features. On top of that, you are entitled to just about any Rock Band DLC you might have purchased on the PlayStation Network. You can re-download into Rock Band 4 any DLC you previously purchased on PlayStation Store for earlier versions of Rock Band. Best of all, this is free – no need to buy songs for a second time.

Additionally, most previous PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 wireless music game controllers from Rock Band and other franchises will work with Rock Band 4 on the PlayStation 4, without needing any other additional equipment. So if you want to add in a few more folks to the party, you can use the stuff you already own. To find out all the details, take a look at our detailed compatibility chart here.

Freestyle vocals

If you like to sing, you’re in luck. We’ve completely revamped the singing game, adding a new feature called Freestyle Vocals. Freestyle Vocals rewards you with a points bonus for improvising – as long as you are singing in the key of the song, you’re good! It’s a great feature for people that like to sing.

Classic band gameplay with new twists

We’ve updated all the major modes of play, from the classic QuickPlay mode, to a new ‘Shows’ mode that introduces dynamic setlist voting (never lose friends over what song to play next again), to the revamped campaign. So the classic band gameplay you love is still there.

Thanks for supporting us!

Lastly, just in case it isn’t clear, we are 100% committed to the Rock Band franchise. We want to work with you, our community, to continue to build upon this game. Let us know what you think! Rock Band 4 was built from the ground up based on the features the most fans wanted, and we’re always happy to hear where you think the franchise should be headed. We’ve got an aggressive schedule of feature updates and weekly new song DLC for after launch, so stayed tuned from us as well.

We have loved seeing you guys rock out at events across the globe this past spring and summer, and we can’t wait to see what fun folks have with the final game, as you all discover and rediscover the joys of being Rock Gods.