Rock Band 4 is coming, but not to the Wii U unless you tell Harmonix (and even then…)
It seems like only yesterday the living rooms of the world were cluttered up with a sweaty mess of people and plastic musical instruments rocking out to Kiss, ah good times. Now the party is set to start again with Rock Band 4 announced today, problem is this time it’s only coming to the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One… for now.
It might never happen buy Harmonix, the developers of Rock Band haven’t completely closed the door on the possibility of a Wii U version of the game in the future – they might be persuaded however. Speaking to HardcoreGamer the team at Harmonix was asked if there was going to be a Wii U version, here is their response.
The Wii U is a really hard call for us, but from our initial research the audience is not there yet, and I would be really psyched for there to be this public outcry of “Where is the Wii U? I will absolutely throw money at you and I wanna buy it and preorder it!” and all that. And then we start working on it. – Daniel Sussman
Another team member then goes on to say that most of the Wii audience has moved over to the PlayStation 4, at least by their reckoning. While this type of port begging never usually works the companies FAQ gives more hope that a Wii U version may eventually come, just not at launch.
Q: Why not Wii / Wii U / PC?
A: Due to shifting production priorities and capabilities of the studio, we don’t currently have plans to release RB4 on the Wii / Wii U / PC simultaneously with Xbox One and PS4. While we genuinely appreciate the support of Wii Rock band users over the years, and the increased interest from PC gamers, the truth is that we had to prioritize opportunities on other platforms with historically larger RB audiences.
The second coming of the plastic instrument is upon us, would you buy the game on Wii U?
Expecting people to beg for a dead franchise in a dead genre, lol. They will be the ones begging for more customers soon enough.
I bet it has more to do with them wanting to sell more plastic instruments, and since the Wii U is still backwards compatible with all the instruments already released for the Wii, the potential to rip customers off by making them buy everything all over again isn’t there.
Let’s not be too harsh guys. I know we have copped a lot of rubbish excuses from big publishers on games skipping WiiU, but Harmonix are doing what’s a smart business decision as it’s just too much of a risk.
They released a survey and obviously there were just not enough people wanting it on Wii U for them to be able to justify the expense of making it. Personally I would really love the game on Wii U and I would buy it 100%.
Hopefully enough people keep asking for it, or a ‘kickstarter-like’ deal could be set up where if a target is reached we can get the game.