Rock Band 4, which was originally released on PS4 and Xbox One all the way back in October 2015, will still remain available to those that already own the title. However, the only way new players will be able to get their hands on the title will be through physical copies, which are likely quite rare at this point since the gaming market has turned to digital distribution in a major way.

Along with the game itself, DLC will also continue to be available to players that have previously bought it. As time keeps moving along, more and more DLC that was previously released for Rock Band 4 will also start getting de-listed owing to the licenses expiring. This also means that, with the passage of time, players won’t be able to get their hands on older DLC for the title, likely making them miss out on many song collections.

“We’re so grateful for the passion this community has shown,” said Harmonix in its announcement. “From the team, it’s been a special experience to serve you with Rivals challenges, a super deep downloadable content library and a best in class band sim. If you’ve been meaning to grab a few last songs, now’s the time. Thanks again.”

Interestingly, while Rock Band 4 has been around for a decade at this point, it never really got upgraded to special PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions. Rather, the title still remains dependent on the backwards-compatibility of both consoles to remain playable. This also means that, for players that picked up physical copies of the title, a disc-based SKU of PS5 and Xbox Series X/S would be mandatory in order to play it.

While Rock Band 4 featured the same classic rhythm-based gameplay with plastic peripherals that made the title famous with the 2007 release of the first game on PS3 and Xbox 360, it also brought with it plenty of new features. Chief among these features was the addition of Freestyle modes that allowed players to go into quick freestyle solos.

The title has also seen the release of several DLCs featuring new music over the years, with the first one arriving shortly after its release. It even eventually got online multiplayer, which was a major change for the franchise since it was traditionally known for its strong offerings in the local multiplayer space thanks to its use of peripherals.

While Harmonix has worked on several other projects since the release of Rock Band 4, 2021 saw the studio getting acquired by Epic Games. The company noted at the time that Harmonix would tap into its experience with working on music in games to “develop musical journeys and gameplay for Fortnite.”

Super Mario Galaxy 2

The game where Mario is the kind of person who has a vanity license plate with his own name and face on it, Super Mario Galaxy 2 takes the gravity defying mechanics and tight controls of the original title and allows the ideas to get wonderfully weird with the assumption that players tried the first Galaxy. Players dedicated enough grab all 120 stars in the game were greeted not with a final message, but the delivery of 120 Green Stars scattered across the game. Though the spirit of not just making us play though the game again as Luigi was something, the strange hidden object game they played with us by not giving hints for each star and asking you to individually locate and figure out how to collect them in the old missions got tiring very fast.

Earlier this week, Harmonix announced it would be adding some new features to Rock Band 4 this fall including synchronous online multiplayer. With this new expansion, Rock Band 4 players will be able to compete with others, all over the world.

There aren’t a great deal of details about the expansion just yet but the company talked to Videogamer and told the site, the “expansion pack is a traditional paid expansion and launches later this year with two new modes as well as a host of other updates”. The company is clearly attempting to listen to its community of players in rolling out the newest features.

Another feature that will apparently be rolled out during the fall is the ION Drum Set support. The company has said it will shed more light on the full details of this fall’s expansion at E3. We don’t have a full launch date but the expansion for Rock Band 4 is due this fall.

New DLC is available for Harmonix’s Rock Band 4 today, the company announced. The new songs will be available for just £1.69 per track, or $1.99 in North America; the new DLC arrives alongside a brand new update that fixes and enhances the game.

In addition to free updates, Rock Band 4 is also going to get steady DLC in the form of new music tracks every month over the next few months. The DLC available starting today, February 2, includes:

• Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams — “Get Lucky”
• Kelly Clarkson — “Heartbeat Song”
• Outkast — “Hey Ya!”

February’s update to the game brings a lot of changes to the table. The full patch notes follow:

• Scores earned via Play a Show mode now post to the leaderboards;
• New Rock Shop items include Raz’s helmet from Double Fine’s Psychonauts as well as a Whispering Rock t-shirt;
• Puts the end to several scoring exploits, including the Band Overdrive issue;
• Several fixes that improve scoring issues with the Freestyle Guitar Solo system;
• Audio mix adjustments which result in a more “full” and “live” mix, as well as several minor bug updates.

Finally, although Harmonix did not announce specific songs, they did tease some of the artists who would be included in future DLC. These are:

• Bruno Mars
• Five Finger Death Punch
• Generation X
• J. Geils Band
• Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
• masaya matsuura
• Motörhead
• Orleans
• Royal Blood
• Zac Brown Band

Rock Band 4 is available on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

To celebrate the fact that Psychonauts 2 is a thing that is actually, against all odds, going to be happening, Rock Band 4 will get some brand new DLC, which will get players costume items based on the original Psychonauts game.

The DLC will include Raz’s flying helmet, as well as a set of sweet Whispering Rock T-shirts for players to wear in-game, which is already pretty damn awesome, if you ask me. The DLC will be made available to all players for absolutely free as part of Rock Band 4‘s January 2016 update.

Rock Band 4 is a revival of the Rock Band franchise, featuring a return of the party rhythm game series, and full backwards compatibility with all your instruments bought for the previous Rock Band games, as well as most of the music you may have purchased for them (outside of some minor snafus). It is available now for the PS4 and the Xbox One.

When Rock Band 4 was announced, one of the selling points was backwards compatibility, and lots of it- all of your old Rock Band instruments and hardware would work with the new game. All of your pre-purchased DLC tracks for Rock Band would work with Rock Band 4.

On the PS4 front, there have been some issues with that last part. European users have been unable to access quite a few Rock Band 4 DLC tracks on the PSN Store, despite the fact that those same tracks have been available on Xbox Live, as well as on PSN and Xbox Live elsewhere in the world. It has been frustrating for many PS4 owners- and it’s not going to change until December.

In a post on the European PlayStation Blog, Harmonix has said it is working with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, which runs the European PlayStation Store, to get the tracks live.

“First off, thanks for sticking with us as we work through post-launch to address the issues you are reporting,” product manager Eric Pope said. “We acknowledge that things haven’t been perfect. But I assure you we do care, very deeply, we are always listening, and we’re working through resolving everything.

“We expected we’d be able to say ‘it’s fixed’ a lot sooner than it has turned out to be,” he admitted. “While we’ve made progress on the North American (SCEA) side, we appreciate it may have been frustrating for players to see less movement on the SCEE side and this is due to slightly different technical processes across the stores.”

That said, a fix will be here by December for sure.

“SCEE is already well underway with the process and targeting early December for release for the content to be updated in the Store,” he said.

So, PS4 Rock Band owners in Europe- it’s not too long now, just about a month more. Hold on tight.

Rock Band 4, the long awaited revitalization of the franchise and of the instrument peripheral based rhythm game genre, is a pretty good game- it’s user friendly, it’s got great gameplay, and it sets a great foundation for the future. It’s a good enough game, in other words, that it should be allowed to speak for itself. Which is what makes this so shameful- even more shameful than it would have been otherwise.

People realized that Harmonix employees seemed to be posting positive feedback for the game on Amazon- and Harmonix has since admitted that these reviews were indeed posted by members of its staff. At the very least, however, it appears that this was not a companywide thing- apparently the employees in question posted these of their own accord.

“Harmonix has clarified its internal policy about posting reviews of our own products on retail sites, and we’ve asked that existing reviews be edited to identify Harmonix employees or be removed entirely,” the studio said in a statement to Eurogamer. “While we believe the reviews posted by a few employees were sincere and without ill intentions, as a studio we don’t believe these are appropriate actions. We appreciate the feedback from the community, and take our relationship with our fans seriously.”

It appears as though a number of these reviews have since been removed- so good on Harmonix for following through, if nothing else.

The Pro-Cymbals expansion kit for Harmonix’s just released Rock band 4 is available to pre-order in stores starting today; the kit is due to release by Holiday 2015, and contains three Pro-Cymbals- realistic crash, hi-hat and ride cymbals. As any musician will tell you, they are indispensable for more sophisticated percussion, which in turn is necessary to set the pace, tone, and tempo of a song.

The peripherals will, as always, be cross compatible. The set will cost you $50.

That’s not all, either- new tracks from Alabama Shakes, Breaking Benjamin, Death From Above 1979 and The Pretty Reckless are now available in Rock Band 4’s music store. Each track costs $1.99 to download.

Also remember, if you have any music that you previously purchased for Rock Band on the PS3 or Xbox 360, you can download it for Rock Band 4 as long as you are still in the same console family by heading on over to the Rock Band music store too.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, full of AAA releases, but EA Sports’ FIFA 16 has still managed to stay on top of the UK charts according to Gfk Chart-Track. This is despite competition from Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection on the PS4 which debuted at second place among strong critical acclaim.

Destiny: The Taken King has also been seeing a fair amount of success since launch. It’s moved up to third place in the past week while LEGO Dimensions is in fourth. Forza Motorsport 6 is in fifth place followed by Grand Theft Auto 5 which simply refuses to leave the charts at this point.

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer on the 3DS is actually in seventh place followed by Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain and NBA 2K16. Debuting at tenth place is Rock Band 4 and hopefully that’s not a sign of the game’s future.

What are your thoughts on the past week’s sales in the UK? Let us know in the comments below.

Rock Band 4, the revival of the classic rhythm game series (and also the plastic instruments based rhythm game genre) is now finally here, and the launch has not gone necessarily as smoothly as you would expect- apparently, the Xbox One version of the game is in short supply.

Regular readers of GamingBolt probably remember that the Xbox One version of the game, which is more expensive than the PS4 version, comes with a ‘legacy adaptor’ included in the package, which lets users use their Xbox 360 instruments on the Xbox One with Rock Band 4- apparently, this is the version of the game that seems to be in short supply, showing up as out of stock at all major retailers.