Amplitude Wiki – Everything you need to know about the game

Amplitude is an upcoming music driven rhythm game that is currently being developed by the popular music game developer, Harmonix (Harmonix Music Systems) who developed the previous iterations of the Amplitude games as well as the exceptionally popular Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises.

The game is being released as an exclusive to Sony platforms, but there’s no exact release date that has been confirmed yet. When Amplitude does launch, it will be a digital download only and will be available on the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation 4 via the PlayStation Store.

• 1. Development
• 2. Campaign
• 3. Gameplay
• 4. Tracks

Development

The newest Amplitude game came into being after Harmonix Music Systems decided to launch a Kickstarter Campaign for the game in an attempt to secure funding. The asking price for the games successful funding was $775,000 US.

As of May 22nd of 2014, the game was successfully funded, but only by the narrowest of margins with the final pledges being made with the last 24 hours of the campaigns time. The final total for the Amplitude campaign came to $840,000 which was pledged by more than 14,000 people. One of the people that pledged the most to the game was Ted Price, the CEO of Insomniac Games who developed Sunset Overdrive and Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus. 9 Days away from the campaigns completion, it sat as having gathered only 30% of its $775,000 goal.

Prior to going down the route of Kickstarter, Harmonix tried to find other means of funding the game, but found no success. John Drak, Harmonix’s Director of Publishing and PR said, “A bunch of you have been asking questions along the lines of, ‘Hey, why does Harmonix need to do a Kickstarter? Isn’t Harmonix rich from all of that Rock Band / Dance Central money? Can’t you fund this yourselves?’ The short answer is: nope,”. He went on to say, “Make no mistake — without this Kickstarter, there’s no clear path to getting Amplitudemade or a clear scenario where we can afford to fund the team ourselves and release it. It’s not a ploy — with the current landscape, without your support, this game won’t exist,”

This latest game in the series is to be considered an official “reboot” of the series, and not a sequel or remake of the original. The overall goal of the reboot is to make a game similar to the original with the same addictive gameplay but to make use of new music, modern graphical capabilities and new hardware features, specifically those afforded to the developers by the PlayStation 4’s Dualshock Touchpad.

Developers said, “This is our first time working on PlayStation 4, and it’s been a big learning experience for the team. We’ve put a lot of work into our proprietary engine to support some of the new, awesome content we’re bringing to the reboot. These factors combined have bumped production out a few additional months.”

The game was originally given a target release date of some time in March of 2015, but due to a lack of experience working on the somewhat newly released PlayStation 4 platform, Harmonix was forced to delay the game until some time in Mid-2015. They’re now targeting a “summer” release window to give the developers more time to improve and further refine the game. Harmonix have also said that when the PAX East convention rolls around in March 2015, the game would be available in a playable form on the show floor.

Campaign

Amplitude is highly unlikely to feature any sort of story mode per-say, but the game will likely feature a campaign mode that will take the player through a series of increasingly more difficult tracks, similar to how the player progressed through the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games that were also developed by Harmonix.

Gameplay

The gameplay that we’ve been shown of the game thus far doesn’t differ in any significant way from the previous games in the series. The most notable improvements to the game take the form of visual upgrades.The power offered to the developers by the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 means they can have improved visuals and have the game look and feel faster than the PS2 builds of the game.

While specific game modes haven’t been detailed, Harmonix has commented on the game saying that it will feature a “far more polished” multiplayer mode which at least points to its return. Previous Amplitude games featured 4 play modes, Single Player, Remix, Multiplayer and Online modes.

Tracks

Thus far, an official tracklisting hasn’t been confirmed for the game, but we do know that groups like Freezepop and Kasson Crooker, who previously worked on the original Amplitude, will be returning to work on music for the game alongside Anamanaguchi, Danny Baranowsky, and Jim Guthrie.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.