Dhani Harrison has been making the interview rounds in support of his band thenewno2, who’s currently on tour in the States opening for Wolfmother. You probably know that the son of Beatle George Harrison was pretty instrumental in getting The Beatles: Rock Band made; he acted as intermediary between Harmonix and Apple Corps, helping the Beatles rights-holders understand why the game would be A Very Good Idea.
What you may not have known is that he’s continuing to work for Harmonix as a consultant. And apparently, he’s working on Rock Band 3.
Here’s a quote from an interview with the Chicago Tribune:
“I’m working on ‘Rock Band 3′ and making the controllers more real so people can actually learn how to play music while playing the game,” he says. “Give me a couple years, it’s going to happen.”
And here’s one from the Boston Herald:
Now Harrison is working on “Rock Band 3” to make it even more realistic. His goal: to get the game to actually teach people to play music, not just to pantomime in rhythm.
Of course it would be nothing to include teaching tools for drums or vocals in the game — those would quickly develop real-world skills that could be taken out of the game. But how do you use a five-button guitar controller to teach anything more than rhythm and independent finger and hand movement? Harrison mentions “making the controllers more real”…could we be seeing a major instrument upgrade in the next generation?
I’ve contacted Harmonix representatives for comment; I’ll let you know if I hear anything.
[image © Noah Abrams, via thenewno2 @ MySpace]
All credit to Dhani Harrison for getting the conservative Beatles rightsholders to do Rock Band, but this sounds to me like the kind of thing people say before they’ve actually tried to do it.
I bet, if they had the resources to put into it, Harmonix could make a great intro-to-guitar game with, I don’t know, 21 fret buttons and three strum bars (seven ‘frets’), but the controller would cost $120 and it wouldn’t be in Rock Band 3.
Sounds like a handed down acid flashback of Magic Alex claims.
No seriously within 5 years YES this is very possible, but as Grasa Total says, it won’t be in RB3, it likely won’t even be in the RB-proper franchise and it will require an expensive peripheral or perhaps interpret a real guitar.
The biggest challenge will be the visual nomenclature for sight-playing guitar, unless they are ditching the entire waterfall-note-highway approach.
If you have a real guitar then project natal would be a great tool to help them accomplish what he is saying…not hard at all. Even if you don’t all you need is a plastic guitar you can string yourself and bam. Your wish is their profit margins.
I suspect we’ll see some new interface eventually that will use a real guitar. The note highway won’t work, but perhaps some sort of moving tab might work. I think a new game would be the best method, but I can see learning to play real guitar be pretty easy/fun if they incorporate some of the ideas that make GH/RB fun: difficulty levels that still have you feel like you’re playing something, videogame style rewards (score, unlocks, etc), and most importantly instant feedback.
Apparently so!
haha dummies you were wrong it’s in RB3.