Rock Band (video Game) - Development

Development

Harmonix Music Systems was previously responsible for making the Guitar Hero series, while RedOctane manufactured the peripherals and owned the rights to the series. However, in June 2006, RedOctane was bought by Activision, while in September 2006, Harmonix was purchased by MTV Networks. As a result of the two purchases, Harmonix would no longer be able to develop future Guitar Hero games. Instead, Neversoft, a subsidiary of Activision, would take over development; the company released Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock on October 28, 2007. According to "The Business", the game cost $200 million to develop. Harmonix's Vice President of Product Development, Greg LoPiccolo, stated that the game took about twenty months to develop, already having envisioned the possibility of different instruments before they were completed with the Guitar Hero series.

In selecting the soundtrack for Rock Band, the developers recognized that they needed to select songs that were recognizable, particularly on vocals; in contrast, when they were selecting songs for Guitar Hero, they were able to pick songs that played better even if they were less recognizable. They also consider songs that would help players come together socially, such as in The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again", where they retained the long synthesizer solo such that the band members would all start playing again after it for a big finish. The team were able to introduce songs from smaller artists that they felt were good additions, such as "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and "Electric Version" by the New Pornographers to help also introduce players to those classes of music. For about half the songs, they hired a studio to sing along to the lyrics as a crowd would at a stadium, such that during the game, when players are performing well, the additional crowd sing-alongs would add to the performance experience.

Current Harmonix parent company MTV provided financial support to the development process, taking advantage of its stature to facilitate deals with record companies for licensing rights to songs. Several record companies pledged their support by offering master recordings. Pressed for office space, Harmonix was forced to move its offices in the middle of Rock Band's beta period in order to support the company's 130-person staff. However, they continued to bring on more developers in order to complete the title on time. This led to several problems in bringing the newer coders on board without any technical plan, requiring the team to redesign several parts of the game, such as online matchmaking, several times to correct. Although the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game were developed in-house, Harmonix outsourced development of the PlayStation 2 version to Pi Studios, as it omits certain features.

Harmonix faced difficulty in making the Xbox 360 guitar wireless, as developers are charged a licensing fee to use Microsoft's wireless technology. Had Harmonix chosen to pay the fee, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 bundles of Rock Band would have sold at different price points. Instead, Harmonix elected to choose a wired technology for the Xbox 360 bundle's guitar.

Rock Band was first announced on April 1, 2007. Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos said in the announcement that Rock Band "takes the core premise of Guitar Hero and expands it tenfold. It lets you create a complete collaborative band." Rock Band was a featured game at the 2007 E3 convention and provided one of the exhibition's highlights; Harmonix employees and Microsoft executive Peter Moore played the game on-stage, performing The Hives' "Main Offender". Moore paused the game twice when he accidentally hit the guitar's Xbox Guide button.

A software update was released on March 21, 2008, which added new features to the game. The update included an in-game music store with preview and sorting options, revised microphone performance, and faster downloadable content loading.