All Articles: Rock Band 4

Activision kicked off the second great rhythm game war earlier this week by unveiling two dozen songs from Guitar Hero Live. But this weekend, Harmonix responded by opening up to IGN about the first six songs that will be included in Rock Band 4:

• Avenged Sevenfold – “Hail to the King”
• Fleetwood Mac – “You Make Loving Fun”
• Jack White – “Lazaretto”
• The Killers – “Somebody Told Me”
• Spin Doctors – “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong”
• The Who – “The Seeker”

Looks like The Killers aren’t committing to either game (“When We Were Young” will appear in Guitar Hero Live), but I think I’m most surprised to see the Spin Doctors in Rock Band 4’s soundtrack. They’re a bit of a punchline now, but people forget that Pocket Full of Kryptonite sold five million copies in 1991.

What other wacky and weird forgotten bands will make the cut in Rock Band 4? Your guess is as good as mine, but we’ll get to hear the whole soundtrack when the game is released sometime this Fall for the PS4 and Xbox One.

When Harmonix announced Rock Band 4, they promised that it would be a “back to basics” experience that gamers with a closetful of plastic instruments would instantly recognize. Thankfully, the developer is making sure those instruments will work with their new rhythm game.

Speaking to Business Insider, Harmonix’s Daniel Sussman said that Rock Band 4 will support as many legacy instruments as possible: “We’re planning to support everything that we can: That includes all of the old Rock Band controllers, and all the old Guitar Hero controllers.”

Sussman further explained that Harmonix is doing this out of respect for the original investment players made in these instruments five years ago:

“Our position is really all about respect for our consumers and for the money that they have spent to get into the game space in the first place. They spend a fortune on games: on consoles, on hardware, and we’re sensitive to that. We play those games too. We buy all the same stuff. A world where you need to have three different guitars and two drum sets and all this stuff is…we don’t want to support that world.”

Guitar Hero Live will use a new six-button guitar controller that departs significantly in style from the instruments that came before. If possible, Sussman and his team plan to support it in Rock Band 4 too.