Official Discussion Thread: New Rock Band DLC Releases Ending In April

[bonethug0108]

Henry ... Did the HMX team consider that since new DLC is ending there could be a drastic and sustainable spike in demand for RBN releases from the PS3 community? I would imagine there would be increased interest since that would be the only avenue left for new DLC. From a business standpoint, I guess the questions would be how much and how to forecast to allocate resources to it. Anyway, just curious ... thanks in advance.

To be very blunt, the recognizability of most rbn bands is far far less than 99% of the bands hmx releases. Most people go with what they know. You can even see that with big bands hmx releases with singles vs. deep cuts. If there is a spike it'd be very small.

"Practically" overnight does not mean "literally" overnight, even with a full crew working on Rock Band DLC.

You really need to learn to appreciate what you've been given and stop demanding for "MOAR MOAR MOAR!" with every single post, especially when you've been told, multiple times, in no uncertain terms, from several different angles, that This. Is. It.

I really would rather not see you here on the forums a year from now, still accusing Harmonix of not keeping their promises. "You guys literally said there could be more DLC if the opportunity came! WHERE IS IT?!!" Don't be that guy. You'll only hurt yourself. And that's no way to live.

I was just about to say the same thing about practical vs. literal.

[HairyMan]

I guess there is a good thing to take from the release date. For anybody who is really OCD or lives by the numbers, the short-hand release date for the final song is an anagram for 1-2-3-4. (4-2-13). So that's somewhat smoothing.

Or you can be a negative ninny and come up with the rhyme of " One, Two, Three Four, DLC Is New No More."

[PlasticEskimo]

I will hate Tuesday more than Monday from this day forth.

[tnevaker]

On the bright side, I guess I'll finally have time to read "Fifty Shades Of Grey".

i'm waiting for the sequel about the sexual favors HMX traded to get us all this awesome DLC over the years. it's called "Fifty Shades of Drake"

[defdog99]

Read that the Xbox indy marketplace is going away, that's Doom for RBN for everyone.

[DragoonXD]

Read that the Xbox indy marketplace is going away, that's Doom for RBN for everyone.

There's already a thread on the RBN subforum about this, and it has been clarified by HMX that it shouldn't effect RBN.

[hmxhenry]

I do have a couple of questions/requests

1) I hope that the "missing" songs from RB2 will make it into the game. "Any way you want it" has and absolutely fun riff to play on plastic guitars.

Songs that weren't able to export are unlikely to return. We were able to recover Spoonman and Give It Away in RB Blitz, but with weekly DLC ending it's unlikely that we'll see any other missing export tracks.

2) I hope that HMXHenry and the others will get back to the hints for the final weeks of DLC. I've always enjoyed watching people guess, trying to figure out the hints, etc. It would be fitting to get back to the roots of the hints knowing the end, err pause in DLC is near.

The mods and I have been doing hints for a number of recent releases. They've been less frequent as Blitz re releases have come into play and DLC has been less pack focused and it's harder to give hints for scattered singles.

3) I would like to see a forum where we can ask about a group and/or songs and get responses on why they did/didn't get into the game.

We have plans to talk about the ups and downs of licensing at an upcoming PAX East panel, but I sincerely doubt we'll be able to set up a forum for it or respond to every question that comes up. Opening the door to questions about every song from every band would mean, even if I was able to comment on specifics or knew the details, I could spend 40 hours a week on the forums and never be able to reply to everything.

I always thought we'd see Rock Band drop to bi-weekly or monthly DLC before they totally dropped DLC altogether.

By releasing the Blitz tracks as singles, we have essentially gone to a bi weekly new DLC schedule. We considered a number of different scheduling possibilities, but ultimately decided that this would be the least disruptive to the community and also give us a clear break for production time. Switching to monthly releases, for example, would have meant weeks of confused or frustrated posts between announcements, and it would also mean we'd have to have devs bouncing back from one project to another, authoring DLC one week and then working on other projects the next.

When do the RB3-era tunes go on 50% sale?

Not any time soon. As we mentioned around the announcement of the pre RB3 DLC sale, that took 6-9 months to set up. Coordinating price drops on all 3 consoles in all regions for 1,100 pieces of content is no small feat. We'd need 1st party participation for any further sales and I doubt they're in any rush to jump back into a large scale price drop again. It's technically possible and may happen at some point down the road but we've got nothing planned at the moment.

Henry I don't know if you're joshing but you were the one who said that Green Day upgrades were literally churned out overnight upon request so I don't know why are you contradicting your statement now.

As FujiSkunk pointed out in his post quoting my initial comment, "practically" does not mean "literally". The dev team was able to provide significantly faster than usual turnaround on charting, authoring, and testing the 2 GD upgrades. But, even if they had done that work in literally 24 hours, there are other parts of the process that are inescapably longer. Licensing approval can take anywhere from a day to a year, mixing takes days, animations and lighting cues can take days, and submission to first party can take up to 6 weeks depending on the console. We usually start this process 18 weeks before release, so for everyone involved to turn the GD upgrades around in 6-7 weeks IS practically overnight, especially considering 4-6 of those weeks could have been in 1st party approvals.

Adding pro upgrade for the last DLC is the right move, you know I'm right, if you guys really wanted give the game proper, full band enabled sendoff, you would.

As I mentioned before, those devs had entirely different schedules last October. Devs have transitioned onto other projects, teams have been broken down and moved into other departments, we've moved offices, RB testing hardware has been put into storage, and we're hard at work on upcoming games. So even if the pro upgrades literally only took 24 hours to get license approval, mix, author, chart, test, and submit to 1st party, those resources have already been moved elsewhere and have been for weeks.

I wish more people bought Pro upgrades, honest, I do. But they don't. If they had, we would have made more. I'm sure some people would love to see us add Score Duel back into RB3 so we can give the game a proper send off, or adjust Flame Notes in Blitz, or patch in RB2 era character animations, or have one track from every decade and every genre released, or release "just this one band!!!" to ensure that everyone gets what they want. But that's not going to happen. Not everyone is going to get what they want before weekly DLC ends.

Henry ... Did the HMX team consider that since new DLC is ending there could be a drastic and sustainable spike in demand for RBN releases from the PS3 community?

We've certainly discussed a number of options regarding the future of RBN. As mentioned in the FAQ, we still have the technical capability to release songs (or port songs over to the PS3) should the right band and the right situation arise. But, given the PS3 community's historical interest in RBN releases, I wouldn't expect to see a drastic or sustainable spike in demand, at least not one drastic enough or sustainable enough to change the current plan for RBN on the PS3.

I've been playing Rock Band for years, but this is probably my first post on this forum.

Confirmed, very first post in almost 3 years registered. Thanks for choosing this moment to make it.

Your story, and other stories like it, definitely help make this announcement easier for me to process. RB has been a huge part of my life for the last 5 years as well, and in the weekly updates, and angry band requests, and frustrating customer support emails it's sometimes easy to forget just how much RB means to so many people. The outpouring of support and the positive comments and thanks from the community has been overwhelming. A lot of them, like your story, were bittersweet, but they've all shown the huge emotional investment people have in RB, the music, and the experience. I wish I was able to thank everyone individually, but I'm reading everything, and sending stories around to the rest of the RB team. Thanks so much to everyone.

[HairyMan]

Your story, and other stories like it, definitely help make this announcement easier for me to process. RB has been a huge part of my life for the last 5 years as well, and in the weekly updates, and angry band requests, and frustrating customer support emails it's sometimes easy to forget just how much RB means to so many people. The outpouring of support and the positive comments and thanks from the community has been overwhelming. A lot of them, like your story, were bittersweet, but they've all shown the huge emotional investment people have in RB, the music, and the experience. I wish I was able to thank everyone individually, but I'm reading everything, and sending stories around to the rest of the RB team. Thanks so much to everyone.

If you want, I can send you angry, juvenile, NSFW and inappropriate e-mails and PMs once the DLC ends just to make you feel like "normal".

[Blasteroids]

Not everyone is going to get what they want before weekly DLC ends.

Which reminds me, what happened to that stash of TB:RB avator shirt codes you had? I'm still waiting for the opportunity to acquire one... which will also not happen before weekly DLC ends

[kcswimmer]

Rock Band broke me out of this weird shell I built through the first half of my life. I fell in love with new music, I returned to guitar to learn it fully, I got over my fear of singing in public. On top of everything I got the chance to have fun and look like an idiot at the same time. Trust me, it looks worse then it felt.

You made some good times better and some bad times disappear. So thanks Harmonix. I hope that someday, when my instruments look like they're about to fall apart, I'll be able to show my kids the game I played when I was looking to escape to my Rock 'N Roll Dream.