The kings of rhythm gaming place all hands on deck for The Beatles while continuing their focus on downloadable content.
With annual sales of both Activision’s Guitar Hero and Harmonix’s own Rock Band franchises seeing strong, but diminished returns year-over-year, it’s easy to see that some folks may be suffering from a case of plastic instrument overload. Good news, everyone! If you’ve been plagued with this ailment then you’ll be delighted to hear that Harmonix may be passing on an annual sequel to Rock Band in 2009.
Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos took the stage at the Consumer Electronic Show to talk about the future for the thriving developer which will be quite busy preparing the upcoming Beatles game, based on the Rock Band platform. With all of their creative energy going towards the all important title, it makes sense for it to pass on the easy sequel for more than one reason. While Staci Kramer of PaidContent points out that it would help prevent it from becoming a one-trick pony, it would also keep Harmonix from spreading itself too thin. A trap that seems quite easy to fall into, having resulted in the multiple, staggered releases of previous Rock Band games across all platforms.
That doesn’t mean that Rock Band fans would be without their fix as Harmonix will of course continue their weekly content releases. The library available for the full-band platform is well over 500 songs at this point and Harmonix looks to be pushing themselves hard on boosting this number much, much higher and for good reason, as Rigopulos revealed that his company has sold more than 30 million song downloads to date.
As with every Rigopulos appearance, someone just had to ask: “When will we see keyboards in Rock Band?” His response: “The only answer I can give now is maybe.” As for the need to include a keyboard in The Beatles game for songs like Yesterday-“that has occurred to us.” Well, how else do they expect us to play “Let it Be?”
