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Can Rock Band Translate to PSP?

Kris Graft's picture

By Kris Graft

April 8, 2009

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"We are looking carefully at the DS, and certainly aren’t ruling out developing for it in the future."

The whole appeal behind Rock Band is the ability to play on unique instrument peripherals with a group of friends, basically pretending to be a rockstar in a fun, social environment.

Rock Band Unplugged for PSP essentially strips away those two main components of the Rock Band experience by taking away the "instruments" and making the game single-player.

But maybe it's too early to write off this game.

Greg LoPiccolo, VP of product development at Harmonix says, "Our goal with Rock Band Unplugged was to create an experience that maintained the look and feel of Rock Band, but allowed our fans to take multitrack music gaming on the road.

"The gameplay is not identical to Rock Band on the consoles, but we have a pretty long history making single-player multitrack music game experiences, so we had a lot of experience to draw on."

LoPiccolo has a point. Before creating Rock Band predecessor Guitar Hero, Harmonix made two under-appreciated single-player, multitrack music games: Frequency and Amplitude. Despite their quality and high fun factor, the two games didn't attract much of an audience. But if Rock Band Unplugged can bring some of that gameplay to a new audience under the recognizable Rock Band brand, all the better.

LoPiccolo explains, "It is not exactly the same gameplay as Frequency or Amplitude, but the ancestry is clear. Those games were our starting point in designing Rock Band Unplugged, and we basically merged the core mechanic of Amplitude with a number of more recent design features that were introduced in Rock Band.

"We are still really proud of [Frequency and Amplitude], and are excited to re-introduce this style of gameplay to an audience that might not have ever gotten a chance to play those games. It is kind of a perfect match; the Rock Band track layout works incredibly well with this style of gameplay."

Speaking of the Frequency and Amplitude line, in 2007 Harmonix also introduced yet another modulation, Phase for iPod. This game incorporated the scrolling screen found in its predecessors, but also allowed players to use their own library of music to play along with.

Harmonix revealed last year that Phase was originally planned as a PSP game. Would Rock Band allow users to use their own music on the multimedia-friendly PSP?

"No," LoPiccolo says. "Rock Band Unplugged is a Rock Band game and features some of the best and most popular songs from the extensive Rock Band catalog. Rock Band Unplugged will also feature nine tracks that will be exclusive to the PSP for a limited time before being made available as [downloadable content] for other consoles."

Perhaps the most interesting feature of Rock Band Unplugged is the ability to download additional songs via a "fully-featured in-game store," powered by PlayStation Network, a first for PSP. These DLC songs would be lumped on top of a 40 song on-disc selection.

LoPiccolo says that Harmonix is still ironing out DLC business model plans, so no word on pricing yet, or if music purchases can move across platforms.

Harmonix is currently tied up with development of The Beatles Rock Band, due this September. LoPiccolo says that it's working with Foundation 9 studio Backbone Entertainment to develop Rock Band Unplugged.

"We were presented with a unique opportunity for collaboration with Backbone Entertainment," he says. "They contributed a lot to the design process, and did a great job in maintaining the overall feel and vibe of the original titles. We think the final product stays very true to what fans expect from a Rock Band title."

EA is distributing the game, while MTV Games is publishing and marketing.

Rock Band Unplugged won't be the first rock 'n' roll franchise to hit handhelds. Activision released the first in its portable Guitar Hero: On Tour series in 2008. But that was for DS, and utilized a unique fret peripheral that fit into the handheld's Game Boy Advance cartridge slot. It sold 300K units in North America during its opening week, a DS software sales record for Activision, so there is some precedence for a social rock music franchise successfully translating to a handheld.

LoPiccolo says that Harmonix, which has released Rock Band on Nintendo's Wii, isn't counting out development for the DS. "We are looking carefully at the DS, and certainly aren’t ruling out developing for it in the future. However, for right now, our focus is on Rock Band Unplugged as a PSP title."

While Sony has led a PSP charge this year headlined by game announcements like Rock Band Unplugged, LittleBigPlanet, MotorStorm and Assassin's Creed, PSP owners aren't exactly known as voracious software buyers. LoPicollo says that doesn't worry him. "We have been focused on creating the most authentic rock experience possible on the platform and we believe that the PSP audience will respond."

Rock Band Unplugged is slated to release in U.S. and Europe beginning June 9 this year. It will retail for $39.99 for software only, or in a $199.99 PSP hardware bundle.

BritishCracker's picture
On April 15th BritishCracker said:

OMFG grow up & smell the coffee!

PSP do not need ROCK BAND!!!
PSP needs to be discontinued because its crap!
my old lad bought me one for my 17th birthday i the only game i liked playing got scraped after 2 releases of it!

MarkJFerreri's picture
On April 13th MarkJFerreri said:

Sony has no concept of why people buy portable players. I don't want to play my home genres of game on a bus, or restaurant waiting room, or in line at an amusement park. As far as Rock Band or Guitar Hero are concerned, the attraction is mostly using that ax as a controller to fantasize the playing. The actual game play is almost exactly the same as an old Tengen game that was released many years ago named Klax. In Klax, little colored blocks tumbled toward you in several columns and your timing to hit the correct buttons (associated with the colors) is how you scored and progressed. Because Klax was created by a 3rd party, it came out for just about every format (including the Macintosh computer). It never made the top 40 list, despite the saturation of formats. Klax is too similar to these games to ignore, particularly when you remove the unusual controller interfaces. So close, in fact, that they might be able to push a law suit if the custom controller is excluded from the game.

True, there is that music, but still, these music games, with the columns of descending blocks would get boring quite fast on a PSP unless there was a guitar (or drum?) interface, and who would want to drag a huge controller around, an then squint at the little screen from 4 feet away?

This Rock Band is only an example of the wrong visions that Sony has for their PSP future. The DS knows it's audience and purpose and doesn't try to be something it isn't. When the PSP becomes a portable gaming unit instead of a miniature roadible version of home entertainment (including movies) console, then they will compete with and possibly win against the DS.

For instance, when I first saw the (pre-release) PSP at E3, the first thing I commented on was to design a snap-shut cover (out of shiny black plastic, or tin) to protect the screen and controls. Then when it released, I suggested to 3rd parties to do that. The PSP is vunerable. But to this date, I still see no snap-open snap-shut attachable cover for the PSP. If I had the bucks, I'd manufacture one myself, and sell a million in the first month.

Mark 4RE . . .