Releasing RB Blitz Tracks as Singles & Plans for Upcoming RB DLC

[hmxhenry]

Hey Gang,

Over the past 5 years, we’ve released over 4,000 songs for the Rock Band Platform. The most loyal of you are aware that our DLC production has slowed over time as Harmonix has grown to take on multiple titles beyond the Rock Band franchise. In this new year, with multiple new IPs in development, our production pipeline is continuing on this trend, resulting in fewer songs per week.

As we’ve done previously for track packs, we’ve always planned to release the great soundtrack to Rock Band Blitz as singles for those Rock Band fans who are more particular about what songs they add to their library. For the next few weeks, we’re going to alternate a week of new releases with a week of Rock Band Blitz single releases. This means Rock Band will still be delivering great tracks every week to the Rock Band Music Store, will be bringing these Blitz songs to the Wii for the first time, and will continue to support the Rock Band Network community for their rolling releases on Xbox 360. Also, we have Pro Upgrades planned for a selection of the Rock Band Blitz tracks, so even if you’ve exported already, there will be content that’s new for you.

If you haven’t grabbed Rock Band Blitz yet, you definitely should – it’s a ridiculous value at $15 USD for 25 great tracks. If not, stay tuned – RBB singles are headed your way.

We’ve opened up this thread HERE for your questions. There’s definitely still some great content in the works for Rock Band, so keep tuned to the forums for more information.

Yours,
Harmonix Music Systems

[hmxhenry]

I'm sure there are a number of questions regarding the announcement above, so we've tried to address the most immediate ones in an FAQ below. If you have additional questions or want to discuss the announcement further, you can post in this discussion thread. We'll continue to track conversation there and will respond whenever possible.

1. Why are you releasing Blitz tracks as DLC?

There are a number of reasons why we’re releasing Blitz tracks as DLC. This will be the first time that Wii rockers have had access to these tracks, as Blitz was only available on the Xbox 360 and PS3. Additionally, since the announcement of Blitz, we’ve received a number of vocal requests from members of the community that wanted to pick and choose from singles off the setlist. As we’ve seen with previous Track Pack DLC releases, there is definitely a segment of the community interested in purchasing tracks piecemeal.

2. Will there be any new content available alongside the Blitz singles?

There may be one or two instances where Blitz singles releases are accompanied by previously unreleased content, and there are several Pro Guitar upgrades planned as well. For the most part the Blitz singles will be released by themselves.

3. Are you switching to a bi weekly Blitz schedule because you’re running out of DLC?

We still have some great DLC on the schedule, including the addition of several bands that have not yet appeared in Rock Band, as well as the return of some old favorites. The bi weeks in between Blitz releases will still feature new DLC releases, carrying us well beyond 4,000 total tracks in the library.

4. How long will the bi weekly Blitz releases run for?

The Blitz singles will likely be released in 3-4 song batches every other week over the course of the next 3 months until all 25 songs are available.

5. Why aren’t you releasing all the Blitz songs at once?

Releasing large batches of songs requires a ton of production bandwidth, both for our DLC team and for 1st party testers. Even though these songs were previously available in Blitz, releasing them as singles still requires additional testing and submission time that wasn’t available while developing other titles.

6. Will there be Pro upgrades for the Blitz singles?

We’re planning on adding Pro upgrades for 6 of the Blitz singles. These upgrades should be available to those that have already purchased Blitz, similar to how the Pro upgrades worked for the recent Green Day DLC / GDRB export.

7. What are these new IPs you’re working on? Are any of them RB related / instrument based music games?

Harmonix has several new projects in the works, but unfortunately no Rock Band news at the moment. You can keep posted to HarmonixMusic.com for future project announcements.