A Eulogy For a Genre: Rock Band

Sad news this morning for all of us olds who spent a lot of the mid to late 2000s banging away on plastic instruments, as the remnants of Harmonix announced via their Discord that Rock Band 4, the most recent - if you want to to call a 10 year old game recent - entry in the series, is being delisted from Xbox and PlayStation platforms beginning this Sunday, October 5th. It comes as no real surprise, as the game has long been abandoned and no new DLC songs have been released since early 2024, in lieu of developing content for Fortnite Festival. A RB4 compatible guitar but otherwise meant for Fortnite Festival was released recently as well, but otherwise the game has been on ice - alive, but in limbo.

What's going on is that the licenses for the music have hit their 10 year lifespan. This is the reason why lots of other digital games have been delisted from their platforms over the years, as the diminishing returns means that the cost to re-license them is probably far beyond what they actually make in revenue. And while Rock Band definitely has a dedicated fanbase that still is out there playing and partying, it's still a niche product that is rapidly drying up, especially since there is no more new content coming. So, here we are. Harmonix has cut the price down to $10 for the remaining days of its existence, so now's the time to get a digital copy if you haven't yet, even if it's just to add it to your collection, just in case.

In addition, Harmonix has said that they won't be renewing any licenses for the thousands of available downloadable songs, and while they will be still purchasable for the time being, as those licenses reach their 10 year lifespan, they too will disappear. The Digital Future(tm), everyone! Like the game itself, long as you've purchased the DLC, it should remain available to download on your consoles, so you won't lose access. That can change if a console loses its ability to connect online, or if your hard drive dies, but for now one can be comfortable buying content and having it available in the future. Regardless, all available songs are now ticking time bombs that will someday be vanishware. Hopefully we'll get some deep discounts on what's left, as other games have done when they're delisted.

Given that Rock Band 4 never really set the world on fire - hence, the current situation where the game exists as a legacy product for a small yet dedicated minority 10 years after the fact - it's not a surprise we're here. Aside from those die-hards, who has thought much of Rock Band since 2015? Activision attempted to compete with them again with Guitar Hero Live, a laughably bad product that came and went before anyone really noticed, but by then there was only room for one musical instrument game (if that), as what was once the hottest thing around oversaturated and burned out, rather than faded away, as you do. That's Rock 'N Roll, baby!

For those of us who spent a lot of time (and money!) on Rock Band and its ilk, today's announcement probably evoked a sad bit of nostalgia. It's been 15+ years since any of the games were culturally relevant, but what a time! Some of you have to have seen the pictures and videos of places like Best Buy, where boxes of instruments were stacked up to the ceilings and taking up an ungodly amount of real estate space. Back around 2007-2008, Rock Band (and Guitar Hero, the original Harmonix product that started all this) was everywhere, and at the peak of its powers. Folks "got the band together" and rocked out, buying DLC, new instruments, the whole works.

Then just as quickly, it wore out its welcome. Kind of happens when you release new games every few months. Did we really need Rock Band: Green Day? Probably not. We did need Lego Rock Band though, don't front. Beatles Rock Band too. Guitar Hero was worse, with standalone products for Aerosmith, Metallica, and Van Halen that were of poor quality and barely about those bands. As per usual from massive outfits like EA and Activision, they milked the genre dry in record time. This isn't even mentioning failures like Band Hero, which tried to be more poppy and marketed towards the tween audience of the time, rather than the adults who were at home in the Rock Band/Guitar Hero universes. While the instruments could carry over, reducing costs, seeing a new game on shelves every time you turned around was very tiring. By the time Rock Band 3 came out, with an extra emphasis on a "pro" mode that was more like playing real instruments, things were already going downhill, and never really recovered.

(No comment on Rock Revolution though, a Konami-made clone that featured some of the worst covers of great songs that anyone has ever heard)

On a personal level, I spent far too much money on Rock Band and its ilk. I had the entire instrument bundle and bought well over 500 songs over the years. I was never great at the game and was not able to ever cross the Expert threshold, but the amount of time I put into all the different releases is likely embarrassing in retrospect. Finishing that stupid Endless Setlist was cool at the time, but the idea of sitting there for hours playing 70 some odd straight songs makes my fingers hurt just thinking about it. I remember being very excited for Rock Band 4, and really being into it for a while, but even then, it was just not the same. My kids enjoy watching me play it from time to time, and I hope that they someday will want to pick it up themselves. At least everything I've bought remains, just in case.

Rock Band 4 was never in that same category of appreciation. The game was still stellar and also compatible with every bit of Rock Band DLC released prior, but it had an iffy song selection and was very barebones on day one. It got a lot better and added extra content via the Rivals add-on, but even by then, it lost its luster. Partway through they switched instrument manufacturers, and I remember seeing guitar and game bundles on clearance for $30 or so. Given they generally went for $100 or so when new, that is an insane admission that nobody was buying any of this stuff. Harmonix gamely kept supporting the game for over 8 years, but the song selection was oftentimes strange at best and completely missing the spirit of the game at its worst.

It doesn't help that the instruments needed to play the games are wildly expensive due to scarcity, making it next to impossible to break into the ecosystem today. When the bubble burst, hordes of people traded in their plastic junk or gave it to Goodwill, and while they all work on modern hardware (the Xbox used that dongle, remember? Now go see how much it sells for on eBay), one has to track down said instruments and pay a high price. Even guitars built for RB4 are selling for $70, $80 today, standalone. I'm glad I have one of the blue Jaguar guitars from the Rivals era, otherwise there'd be no rocking out in my house! However, if it finally breaks, paying $150 for the PDP branded seems like a non-starter, on the price alone.

And now we sit here, eulogizing a once proud franchise of days gone by. While I guess the delisting of Rock Band 4 doesn't mean they can't come out and announce Rock Band 5, this is incredibly unlikely and I hope people aren't expecting that to happen. The Harmonix that created Rock Band is long gone for one thing, and what's left is stuck on Fortnite. I have long advocated for a Free Rock Band "shell" that is just the basic "make a playlist" quickplay mode with maybe a small handful of songs, with the rest populated by DLC, as a way to keep things going. However, Rock Band 4 can kind of fill that hole now if you spend the $10 today for a digital copy, and the odds of my idea ever happening is very, very low. It seems like a poor investment and waste of development time in 2025.

The remnants of the old Red Octane, which created the instruments behind the original Guitar Hero, are attempting to create a more modern rhythm game here in 2025, but I doubt it will be based on rock music like GH and RB were, nor will it be a cultural phenomenon like its predecessors. It's safe to say the music instrument genre is dead and buried once Rock Band 4 becomes something you can only buy on a disc, at a likely extravagant price as the copies begin to dry up thanks to collectors hanging on to what's out there. Even today boxed copies of the PS4 game are selling for around $40, though the Xbox One version is going for a great deal less. I can only imagine the price going upwards once October 5th comes and goes, but maybe not? There just might not be any demand anymore for a franchise that peaked when George W. Bush was still president, and while that's a shame, it's also a sign of the times. It's a legitimate end of an era, and for someone who spent a lot of time in that era, it's unfortunate, but also overdue as well. Some things should probably stay dead if they can't return to their former glory.