14 DAY TRIAL // Harmonix has pretty much confirmed that Rock Band 3, which is coming in the fall of this year, will be offering, for the first time in the history of the series, full keyboard simulation for the songs it will be bringing to players. The company did not put out a press release but offered a screen you can see attached to this article, which appears when gamers quit the demo version of Green Day: Rock Band now accessible on Xbox Live.
The image also offers confirmation that Rock Band 3 will have the three-part vocal harmonies that were prominently featured in last fall's The Beatles: Rock Band but the real star of the demo is the introduction of keyboards to the franchise.
The developers of music simulation titles managed to approximate the way bass and electric guitar work and even built fake drum kits but recreating a keyboard with its complexities will be a much tougher challenge. The upside is that its introduction will allow for more complex tracks to be added to Rock Band and might open the way for more classic progressive rock songs being added to the game.
The image and its reveal also clarify a recent teaser announcement from Harmonix saying that players will “be surprised at just how big” their next project is when it is unveiled and launched. It seems that seven people will now be able to partake in Rock Band 3, three vocalists, one leading, one bass, one drum kit, one lead guitar and one keyboard player needing to find space in the same living room to play the game. Quite a few casual Rock Band players might not pick up the game because of space issues.
Another interesting problem that the presence of a keyboard raises is the backward compatibility of tracks. Players might get to a point when playing DLC designed for the first two Rock Band videogames will lead to the keyboard player to sit idle for a few minutes.