Just the other week, the Harmonix developers held an AmA to field questions about the upcoming port of Rock Band 4 to the PC. There was one question that really stood out though. Why should gamers trust Harmonix with a PC port, in a world where so many high profile PC ports have failed?
With less than 24 hours to go, it looks like the PC port of Rock Band 4 will collapse before it gets out of the gate.
At the time of writing, Rock Band 4 needs just over US$750,000 to reach its goal of US$1.5 million. That’s a huge ask with so little time to spare, making it likely that Harmonix will have to scrap the project or find an alternative source of funding.
Harmonix themselves had only pledged to inject US$500,000 of their own money, with the total estimated budget coming in at US$2 million. One of the developers replied that without Fig’s support for investor funding, the total funds raised would have been reduced by the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“Another big benefit of Fig over Kickstarter (or other platforms) is the opportunity for investors, which has actually been a huge draw for this campaign in particular, with 3/4 of pledged funding coming from investors,” a Harmonix developer posted.
It’s not the end for future Rock Band projects though. Harmonix is currently developing Rock Band VR exclusively for the Oculus Rift, and it’ll be interesting to see if any of the planned user-generated content features get revived or re-purposed in some way for that. But as it stands, the PC port of Rock Band 4 looks destined to fall short of its goal.
Comments
9 responses to “Rock Band 4 On PC Probably Won’t Happen”
One thing I’m curious to know is how Fig is actually faring with its whole “True investment” aspect. There have been a few projects funded with investors (Psychonauts 2 being a high profile one) but I have heard very little in the way of anyone succeeding or failing with their return on investment and presumable shareholder type status. If Fig’s opportunity for investors is the drawcard then I’d have thought this would be something people would be keen to hear about. Especially since it’s a little ironic that 3/4 of the pledged funding is from investors despite the fact that the general public has shown very little enthusiasm about it.
Wasn’t Psychonauts 2 the first campaign to use Fig? It hasn’t been released yet, so the only sales so far have been the crowd funding pre-orders. So it seems way too tell.
With that said, the way investments are done in Fig gives the developer quite a lot of control over when they’ll start to pay out. The game’s development expenses get paid off first, and there isn’t much recourse if you think those expenses aren’t legitimate.
One point five millimetre dollars.
That won’t get them very far at all! No wonder it’s failing.
Pretty annoyed with this gens plastic instrument games. Especially given guitar hero nailed the controller, and then pulled this token selling pay to play always online crap.
Yup. And Rock Band 4 decided to stay the course, but with a far less interesting track list and campaign experience. Even with my DLC brought over from RB3 (and there’s no sign of RB1 and RB2 imports happening soon) I found I was coming across the same tracks pretty frequently.
But Rock Band 4 was so well received on consoles.
Oh wait.
I’d call an 8/10 average pretty well received, but as a big fan of the series, I know what you mean.
i love rock band. i will still find any excuse for a rock band party and a few years ago i would have gone in for this in a heart beat.
but after a few failed attempts with rock band 4 i have actually gone back to playing RB3.
RB4 removed features, removed stability, added stupid solos that kill good songs and has made so many huge updates that have pissed me off on so many occasions.