Rock Band 4, the main competitor to the Guitar Hero franchise, isn’t being made for the PC for a variety of reasons, developer Harmonix has advised. Chief among the issues is the perception that the PC platform has the greater potential for piracy compared to consoles, making it more of a risk to develop for.
Speaking to Eurogamer, product manager Daniel Sussman initially claims that the lack of preceding games in the franchise for the PC makes it unattractive to develop for. “The library is not there on PC. The library is there on Xbox and PlayStation. So, for players who want it on PC, really you’re looking at a new audience that hasn’t played before, and I don’t know to what degree there is an audience for new players who have never played Rock Band before on the PC.”
“The other piece is all the security issues, to be perfectly frank,” said Sussman, admitting there to be “something comforting about the closed network” on consoles. “That’s important to our partners in the music industry. Not to say that’s an unsolvable problem.”
Harmonix later issued a clarification on the piracy comments, claiming “We’re not concerned about software piracy on PC,” before suggesting it is more an issue about the music licensing. While it is not completely shutting out the PC, the company states it will be focusing on releasing Rock Band 4 on consoles for this holiday before considering a PC release.
UPDATE Harmonix Statement
We’re not concerned about software piracy on PC. We have and will release games for PC. In fact, last year we released A City Sleeps for PC, Mac, and Linux. As Daniel stated, the security in question is related to licensed music in the game. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have robust functionality in that area. It’s added security that’s handled by the platform holders.
In the case of more open platforms like PC, we’re responsible for that. It’s something we can build. It’s not off the table for the future, however we’re first focusing on delivering Rock Band 4 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this holiday.
