About a year ago it was announced that there would be more Rock Band coming and that peripheral creator Mad Catz, would be helping publish the title here in North America. We rejoiced as there would be more music to jam to and fake instruments to shred on.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem that partnership will last, as the Rock Band creators have dropped Mad Catz as co-publishers and have partnered up with PDP, or Performance Designed Products, another known peripheral developer.
“As we look to fully achieve our goal of creating this console generation’s category-defining music gaming platform, we need to partner with a truly world-class manufacturer that can operate at the scale that Rock Band requires. PDP has a well-deserved reputation for innovation, customer satisfaction, and quality. They have the logistical and technical expertise to support Harmonix’s ambitious plans for the future of Rock Band, with new hardware alongside a major Rock Band 4 feature update coming this Fall.“ said Steve Janiak, Harmonix CEO.
“ Rock Band is the premier music platform for console players,” said Chris Richards, CEO, PDP. “This will be a great partnership and gaming fans should get ready to experience new, innovative hardware products for Rock Band 4 and Rock Band VR.”
Rock Band 4 continues to expand and evolve, with 5 free title updates already delivered since launching last October, and ongoing frequent updates planned. Harmonix also recently announced a Fig campaign for a PC port of Rock Band 4: https://www.fig.co/campaigns/rock-band-4-pc
This shakeup comes at a time when Mad Catz has had an executive switch up and also having to cut 37% of its workforce due to producing too many peripherals for Rock Band 4.
Hopefully this isn’t a repeat with PDP, but, it’s too soon to tell.
