Rock Band 4 crowdfunder for PC flops

Harmonix Music Systems, the US creator of the popular Rock Band game franchise, has canned a PC version of Rock Band 4.

This was after a crowdfunding campaign to raise US$1.5 million only mustered up $792,817, or 52.85% of the target, from 1,674 backers. Harmonix would have topped up the $2 million budget with $500,000 of its own.

The company conceded, "There doesn’t seem to be enough of an audience to make Rock Band for PC a viable project for us right now.” It pointed out that "as an independent developer we have to be careful about how much money and development time we risk on a project we’re not sure has a big enough audience."

Harmonix co-founders Alex Rigopulos and Matthew Nordhaus offered would-be investors profit sharing, in-game credits, an inclusion of their song in the soundtrack, and a half day visit to Harmonix HQ in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that included lunch and a jam session/ game match with staffers.

The company admits the prizes offered were part of the problem: some were grabbed straight away while others hardly caused any interest.

The PC version, which was to have been developed by British studio Sumo Digital, would have allowed PC gamers to add user generated content like their own songs through the Rock Band Network.

Rock Band 4 was published for Xbox One and Play Station 4 platforms last October after a three year hiatus. Rock Band (2007), Rock Band 2 (2008) and Rock Band 3 (2010) had by October 2014 sold 13 million copies and netted the company over $1 billion.

At its peak, in 2008, over 100 million downloadable songs had been purchased from the Rock Band store (mostly hard rock tracks). It was averaging the sale of 1 million downloadable songs every nine days.

Rock Band 4 included new elements as allowing users to incorporate freestyle guitar solos and freeform melodies on multi-part vocals. Some users weren’t happy that some features had been dropped. Neither were they impressed that some of the 60 licensed songs on the soundtrack were from lesser-known acts. Rock Band 4’s 60 songs brought the catalogue of the Rock Band franchise to 2000.

Rock Band 4 sales were less than expected, its revenue estimated in January to be $100 million.

After a successful campaign for Amplitude through Kickstarter in May 2014 which hit its target of $844,000, Harmonix this time switched to investment platform Fig. Fig raised $3.83 million in January for Double Fine’s Psychonauts 2 and $445,000 this month for Interabang Entertainment’s Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch.

Harmonix is currently focusing on virtual reality projects, including Rock Band VR for Oculus Rift and an app called Harmonix Music VR. It says the experience will be different to what Rock Band fans are used to, and will reveal more details at the E3 expo in Los Angeles in June.