The company is just waiting for the right time to announce them

Jul 11, 2014 22:04 GMT  ·  By

One of the biggest game genres for the last current-generation of gaming consoles was based on music and plastic instruments, with series like Guitar Hero and Rock Band tempting players to put aside their shame in order to try their best to simulate classic rock and pop tunes.

Mainly due to oversaturation, the genre declined rapidly and no longer has the same popularity, but it seems that Harmonix, the development team that has been at the forefront of its creation, is currently thinking about how to make it attractive again for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

Alex Rigopulos, one of the leaders of the company, is quoted by NeoGAF as saying during a recent Gamelab event in Barcelona that his team understands what happened to the music genre and is eager not to make the same mistakes on next-gen platforms.

Harmonix is now waiting for the right moment to make an official announcement about their plans for the future when it comes to Rock Band and the plastic instruments that the series uses.

The game creator says that he acknowledges that extra peripherals might not be as attractive to players this time around, especially given that even the motion tracking system Kinect, which was supported by Microsoft, has been eliminated from the Xbox One core retail package.

According to Rigopulos, it is the job of a game development team to make sure that the gameplay mechanics that they created are attractive enough to convince players to pick up peripherals.

The Harmonix leader also says that his company is exploring how they can make sure that the songs that gamers have bought in the past can be redeemed in some way for next-gen consoles.

The Rock Band series has managed to sell millions of copies in its various incarnations, but no new title linked to it is in development at the moment.

At the moment, the biggest title that Harmonix is working on is Dance Central Spotlight, which is set to be launched in 2015 and will offer a more focused experience than other titles in the series do.

At the same time, the studio is trying to create a rhythm-based shooter called Chroma and will also launch Fantasia: Music Evolved later this year.

It has also managed to raise the money it needs in order to deliver a remake of the classic Amplitude at some point in 2015.